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SH2-101 The Tulip Nebula + Cygnus X-1


steppenwolf

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SH2-101 - The Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

Introduction

I had already captured 1.1/2 hours of data on SH2-101 (The Tulip Nebula) during rather poor conditions, when I came across @ollypenrice  interesting post regarding nearby Cygnus X-1 and its jet induced shock-wave.

With much more data to collect to complete my own image, I decided for the next session to offset the nebula in the field of view to see if I could capture any detail in the ‘bubble’ that Olly alluded to and despite my relatively long focal length of 1070mm, I was able to frame the two objects suitably without having to disturb the orientation of my camera.

SH2-101 - The Tulip Nebula

This fascinating and beautiful object lies approximately 6,000 light years away in the heart the constellation of Cygnus and is set against the rich star fields of the Milky Way. The Nebula was catalogued in 1959 by Stewart Sharpless (an American astronomer with a specific interest in the structure of the Milky Way). Sharpless produced two catalogues, SH1 in 1953 containing 142 objects and a second in 1959 (SH2) containing 313 nebulae of which the Tulip Nebula is one. Near the nebula's centre, there is a hot young magnitude +9.2 star, HD 227018 which powers the ultraviolet radiation that causes the nebula to emit light.

Emission objects like those found in the Sharpless Catalogues respond very well to a two filter imaging process in which only Ha and OIII data is used to produce a bi-colour image. Because the OIII wavelength is right on the cusp between green light and blue light, it can be used for both channels. Ha is part way towards the infra-red portion from the middle of the red channel so mapping Ha to red and OIII to both blue and green produces a false coloured image with the advantage of the extra detail released by narrowband filtering. For this image, I used 3nm filters although my OIII data was captured under pretty atrocious conditions for both seeing and transparency but the Moon isn’t going to play ball for a while so I’m running with what I have.....

My original session image in Ha

278428124_OriginalnightHa_integration.png.19b9b4c35f55862a5e091f9dc675c440.png

Offset image in Ha/OIII

662441235_RGBSH2-101.png.20530be35127ae99008238d9ef60340a.png

Cygnus X-1

Close by is the brightest X-Ray source in the sky, the famous star Cygnus X-1, a binary system with a period of 5.6 days which is widely accepted to be the site of a stellar-mass Black Hole. Optical observations of the period of the companion star indicate that the mass of the black hole is 14.8x the mass of our own Sun which classes this as a microquasar. Recent measurements place the microquasar at a distance of 6,070 light years from Earth.

Using data from various sources including X-ray measurements, scientists have been able to measure the spin of this black hole whose event horizon completes a revolution in excess of 800 times per second. The black hole is stripping mass from its companion star forming an accretion disk which is subsequently either drawn into the black hole or expelled outwards at right angles to the disk in the form of high energy jets also known as ‘collimated outflows’. It is believed that one of the two jets is responsible for excavating the bubble and causing the shock wave that surrounds it while it compresses the interstellar medium. This ring-shaped structure is rich in Ha and OIII emissions making it an excellent target for narrowband imaging.

1262225317_SH2-101_HaAnnotated.png.e3db62095219beed7ae413a2f2d0d041.png

Image Stats

Mount: Mesu 200
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Esprit 150
Flattener: Sky-Watcher Esprit specific
Camera: QSI 683 WSG-8
Filters: Astrodon 3nm Ha, 3nm OIII
Subframes: 9 x 1800 sec Ha, 8 x 1800 sec OIII
Total Integration: 8.5 hours
Control: CCD Commander
Capture: MaxIm DL
Calibration, Stacking and Deconvolution: PixInsight
Post-Processing: PhotoShop PS3

Location

Constellation

Cygnus

RA

20° 00' 48.0"

DEC

+35° 20' 27.0"

Distance

~6000ly

 

399375692_CduCChart.thumb.png.4f1550363c6706b9e49d596046775655.png

Ha_PI_Annotated.png.c9cc516b3c78949432a565b746bfdd14.png

 

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Great images and descriptive post as always. 
 

Encouraging to see the elusive ‘bubble’ can be captured from a UK back garden location, have to love the Esprit 150 light bucket.👍

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52 minutes ago, tomato said:

Great images and descriptive post as always. 
 

Encouraging to see the elusive ‘bubble’ can be captured from a UK back garden location, have to love the Esprit 150 light bucket.

Thanks! It has to be said that I am very pleased with the Esprit 150 it delivers on every level.

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Never ceases to amaze me what can be captured from your own back garden, today's images rival and surpass the images from the "great observatories" that I grew up looking at. Just think what will be do-able in another twenty years. Truly wonderful.

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You wouldn't care to swap OIII filters with me, would you Steve? No, didn't think so! 🤣

This is a great image and capturing the bow shock is a real buzz when you think of the bizarre physics going on to create it. You have it really cleanly. In our case we were plagued by halos so some belligerent processing of the OIII data was necessary. However, Tom is shooting some more from his robotic rig here.

Also the Tulip is lovely in its own right.

Olly

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26 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

You wouldn't care to swap OIII filters with me, would you Steve? No, didn't think so! 

Please re-arrange these words into a well known phrase or saying - 'Hope' and 'No' 😂  One of my better (if costly 😱) decisions was to upgrade to my current filters but just couldn't bring myself to buy the SII as well!

27 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

This is a great image and capturing the bow shock is a real buzz when you think of the bizarre physics going on to create it. You have it really cleanly.

I am indebted to you for bringing it to my attention with your earlier post, Olly as I had no idea it was there until then. There are some great scientific articles about the black hole on the Internet and they make for some fascinating reading - as you say, the physics is bizarre!

12 hours ago, Hals said:

Never ceases to amaze me what can be captured from your own back garden, today's images rival and surpass the images from the "great observatories" that I grew up looking at. Just think what will be do-able in another twenty years. Truly wonderful.

Apart from light pollution and atmospheric moisture, we live in a golden time for astronomy with sophisticated equipment available to the amateur.

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Super image Steve.

On 01/08/2020 at 09:02, steppenwolf said:

Apart from light pollution and atmospheric moisture, we live in a golden time for astronomy with sophisticated equipment available to the amateur.

Agreed and it's great to hear that interest in astronomy has increased over the last few months. Suppliers saying demand is like Christmas time.

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On 06/08/2020 at 17:31, morimarty said:

A very informative discription and a fantastic image too. I think they maybe one or two of us trying to offset the nebula now.

Thank you, Martyn - yes, well worth going 'off-centre'!

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