900 minutes SII 7nm, 900 minutes Ha-OIII 7nm (1X1)
ZWO FF107 107mm Astrograph (f/7)
ZWO ASI2600MC-Air (26 Megapixel astronomical color camera)
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The Cygnus Rift
The Cygnus Rift (or the Northern Coal sack) is a cloud of light absorbing dust that lines our local galactic spiral arm. It can be spotted with the naked eye from a dark site because it blocks the glow from the vast and more distant Cygnus Star Cloud that runs the length of this constellation.
The Cygnus Star Cloud is composed of the combined light from countless stars stacked up behind each other along our line of sight and along the length of the Local Arm. Much closer to us hangs the North American and Pelican Nebulae, pictured here. The Pelican Nebula is depicted on the upper right side of the image. The North American occupies the left. They are situated near the star Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus and are about 1,800 light years from the Sun. Though they have the appearance of being separate both are part of the same nebula- light absorbing dust tendrils hang in front, intervene and seem to divide the gas cloud thus giving an illusion that there are two objects. The entire nebula, as seen here, is over 100 light years wide.
The ultraviolet light from a single star illuminates this nebula. The energy thrown off by this star is bright enough to ionize the material within the cloud. Ionization occurs when electrons are temporarily ejected from atoms and when they recombine a photon of light is released.
Special filters can be placed in front of cameras that only pass the glow emitted by specific ionized hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen atoms. This picture used that technique and assigned a unique color to each element: hydrogen atoms are tinted green, sulfur is colored red and the hue for oxygen is blue. These color assignments were then adjusted by applying the Foraxx color pallet. The Foraxx palette adjusts the contribution of each channel based on the pixel values themselves, leading to more nuanced and accurate color representation.
This image was produced under relatively bright Bortle 5- 6 skies.
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Click here for a larger image!
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