SH2-101 Tulip nebula and surroundings

[Avdhoeven]

The past week it was such beautiful clear weather that I wanted to tackle a larger narrowband project. In 2013, I once started with a TEC140 with images of the Tulip Nebula in the constellation of Cygnus.
Last year I had taken pictures of the tulip nebula with its immediate surroundings with my TMB92 and there was so much to see there that I wanted to continue this.
Six clear nights were predicted and so I decided to make a larger mosaic of this area. To achieve this I had to do some puzzling about how best to divide the area into sub-images to get the best possible picture. This resulted in a center of 3 vertical shots, with last year's shot in the middle, and above and below shots rotated 90 degrees to add 2 more bands at the top and bottom. It took some puzzling to set the precise coordinates in this way, but in the end it went very well. Below you can see the distribution of the different panels.

I ended up shooting a panel every night with the TMB92, QSI583ws and an astrodon 5nm H-alpha filter with 900s exposures. Total 40 hours (137x900s and 8x1800s from 2013). Of course there were some problems during the several nights (guiding that went wrong, tracking camera that twisted, mount that disconnected and so on), but in the end it worked out and I am very happy with the result.

To see the highest resolution (47mp) I recommend to look at my flickr site.

What a nice detail is that the shock wave of the Cygnus X1 black hole can also be seen nicely:

[Phillyo]

That's so cool!! Great image(s).

Phil