North America to Sadr Region (with Cygnus OB2)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Last week I took the opportunity to snap a quick colour starfield between the clouds, so I could blend in a Ha mosaic I'd previously taken of the same region.

While it's a particularly busy region much of the action is happening out of sight behind the dust of the Cygnus rift.

I've labelled a couple objects of interest. On the left is the ionising source for both the NA and Pelican nebulae. The star J205551.3+435225 is a type O star with a surface temperature of 40,000k. If it wasn't dimmed by the intervening dust it would appear 10,000 times brighter, about as bright as Albireo.

On the right is Cygnus OB2, home to some of the most massive and luminous known stars in out galaxy.

The base starfield is just 6x2 minutes with the 6D. The Ha mosaic was 26x2 minutes per panel with the modded 1100D and Ha filter. In both cases I used the Samyang 135mm f2 lens. There is also a little data blended in from an old RGB image, to add some OIII.

Hope you like it, any thoughts on the image would be welcome.

[Ouroboros]

I like it very much. And very interestingly presented too. Such targets really benefit from wide field don’t they?  I also like it when people give some additional astronomical info. 

[megrez]

Fascinating. Thanks!

[MartinB]

The stars are looking good, well worth adding the colour data

[Knight of Clear Skies]

6 hours ago, MartinB said:

The stars are looking good, well worth adding the colour data

Thanks Martin. I'm getting good results blending in very short runs of colour data with Ha images. The Samyang gives a nice starfield quickly, 30 seconds can be worthwhile. It's a handy technique for UK imaging, I grabbed the 12 minutes for the Cygnus image between gaps in the clouds, getting a little drizzle on the lens in the process.