Tulip Nebula
In late august the AstROmania 2017 amateur astronomy camp took place at, well, somewhere far from everything, in the Southern Carpatians, in the Cindrel National Park. About the camp: I find it curious bordering on bullshit to run a generator of kW capacity during the day and early night, only to charge the batteries to be used during the night, and having the stress of running low on power — as it did happen to more people because of the sub zero temperatures and unusual heating needs due to >90% humidity, with visible fog a few meters away, near the stream… I do see some failsafe foolproof logic there, but that again, among highly technical people, who probably know how to plug in electronic stuff, is an insult. Long live logic.
Before the camp, I programmed this astrophotography plannign tool to help me with framing the targets, and printed a few dozen pages with potential subjects, and among those, the Tulip.
I gathered 16×5 min, ISO 1600 light of the Tulip Nebula, using my usual setup: N 150/750, Baader MPCC Mark III, Canon 1100D mod, HEQ5, autoguided. It was unusual how many heaters I had to put on to keep the optics dew and frost free. While processing, I also deployed my star healer.
Sh2 101 [H II nebula in Cyg] Tulip Nebula, Tulipán-köd, Sh2-101, Sharpless 101 9m ø24′ [simbad] 750mm
And the bright star is η Cygni:
HIP 98110, HD 188947 [* in Cyg] 21Eta Cyg, K0IIIvar 3.89m [simbad] [photo-planner]
Although not particularly visible on the picture, the Cygnus X-1 object, a strong X-ray source and the first object to be accepted as a black hole, is somewhere overthere too.
planning
Cygnus X-1
raw sample
DSS stack
My Starhealer’s output
Cygnus X-1 marked
The Tulip Nebula, 16×5 min
