the tulip nebula plus a black hole

[moonshinegnomie]

this is the tulip nebula located about 6000 light years away. just above it is a binary system consiting of a very large star and cygnus x-1 the first discovered black hole. the black hole is estimated to only be 300 km or so in diameter but has a mass of 15-20x that of the sun. its companion,the star we can see is about 20 million miles away from the black hole and interactions between it and teh black hole make the system one of the strongest x-ray emiiteres ever discovered.

This is 26 hours of exposure time in my yard over several nights

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Amazing that this sort of system exists in our backyard! Your photos bring it home. Thank you!

[druidity33]

2. technical questions...

what kind of equipment are you using? If it's over several nights i assume you don't move the camera and leave it out during the day? How do you eliminate starlink/near earth orbit satellites?

Beautiful photo. I've always wanted to try astrophotography but have no idea where to begin....

[moonshinegnomie]

4. this is with an asker v telescope and a sony a6300 camera and an asair plus to control it.

i also use a special filter (askar color magic dual band) to help eliminate light pollution and bring out the light from the nebula.

the scope is mounted on a mount that tracks the stars as the earth rotates. I actually do lieave the equipment out sometimes (i have a cover for it).

basically my workflow is this assuming the scope isnt setup.

1) polar align. this points the point at the north celestial pole so that the mount only has to move in one dimension.
2) slew to the object and verify its correctly pointed. ( basically i take a short photo and the asair compares it to a database of stars to determine if im correctly aimed.) if not i slew until the object is centered.
3) start my guide scope. this is an optional piece of equipment that helps remove tracking errors. the longer each individual exposure the more important it becomes.
4) start shooting. usually i take 5 minute individual exposures over and over using the asair to handle it.
5) in the morning,since i let the scope shoot all night . take a series of special calibration frames. these help eliminate dust spots etc.

6) after I have all the individual exposures and teh calibration frames i run special software to stack the individual exposures and teh calibration frames. stacking elimiates starlink trails and airplanes. a satellite or plane will be in one exposure and not the next so stacking software knows to eliminate the trail. stacking also gets rid of a lot of noise since noise is random and will appear in one image and not the next making removal easier for the software.
7) once the image is stacked it generates a single master file.
8) i then use special software to do whats called stretching. basically it brings out the nebula and stars while leaving the sky black. there are a whole slew of ways to stretch,its very image dependent.
9) then i use photoshop for final edits.

if you intersted in starting out theres some new quipment that makes it easier.
one is the seestar s30 made by a ompany called zwo. its a mount,scope and camera in one unit. it can stack/process th eimages in the device or you have process them yourself. I have 2 seestar s50's which is very similar but has been dicontinued and will be replace later this year. one of my seestars i just had installed ad a remote darksky location that i cna control over the internet just as if i was standing next to it. the s30 has 3 versions,one i. think is about $400 and the other 7-800 or so. you can control them with a table or phone if your not running it remotely.

[George McGovern]

3. It is nothing short of remarkable that you are able make these photographs. Thank You.

"The system was first detected in 1964 when a sounding rocket launched by NASA recorded unusually bright X-ray sources. It took several years of careful observation to realize that these X-rays were being emitted as matter was devoured by an invisible, highly dense companion."
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