Tulip nebula Sh2-101 - a photo on Flickriver

            Result of imaging during the testing of my observatory automation. Unfortunately, I gathered less data than I expected — sometimes the telescope stayed idle under a closed roof due to false alarms from my safety system, and to make matters worse, it even stubbornly imaged the observatory wall. On top of that, a “powerful” power supply completely disrupted communication over the USB bus. It took me a while to figure out where the problem was, but now it’s finally starting to work to my satisfaction.
Sharpless 101 (Sh 2-101) is an H II region emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It is sometimes called the “Tulip Nebula” because in photographs it resembles the outline of a tulip. It was cataloged in 1959 by astronomer Stewart Sharpless. The nebula is located about 6,000 light-years (5.7 × 10¹⁶ km; 3.5 × 10¹⁶ mi) from Earth.
From Earth’s point of view, Sh 2-101 is located near the microquasar Cygnus X-1, which was one of the first suspected black hole candidates. Cygnus X-1 lies about 15′ west of Sh 2-101. The companion star of Cygnus X-1 is a supergiant of spectral type O9.7 Iab with a mass of 21 solar masses and a radius 20 times that of the Sun. The orbital period of this binary system is 5.8 days, and their mutual distance is 0.2 astronomical units. The black hole has a mass of 15 solar masses and a Schwarzschild radius of 45 km.
Equipment: SkyWatcher NEQ6Pro, GSO Newtonian Astrograph 200/800 (200/600 F3), Starizona Nexus 0.75× coma corrector, Touptek ATR585M, AFW-M, Touptek LRGBSHO filters, Gemini EAF focuser, TS off-axis guider + PlayerOne Ceres-C.  Software: NINA, Astro Pixel Processor, GraXpert, PixInsight, Adobe Photoshop.  Exposures: 60 × 120 s R, 55 × 120 s G, 40 × 120 s B, 80 × 60 s L, 45 × 600 s Hα, 18 × 600 s O III, 20 × 600 s S II, master bias, flats, master darks, master dark flats. Gain 150, Offset 300. July 5 – August 2, 2025. Belá nad Cirochou, northeastern Slovakia, Bortle 4.
   

Taken on: August 11, 2025

Tags:

#dso

#astrophotography

#apod more »

#nebula « less

Groups appears in: • APOD Submissions

Stats: 108 views

go back

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder