Nights at Melinda Heights

For a full size image click here.

Distance: 6,000 Light Years

Magnitude: 9.0

Size: 16 x 9 Arc Minutes

Telescope: Borg 71

Camera: QSI683

Mount: AP1100

Exposures: SII 34×600, Ha 34×600, OIII 30×600

This image was captured from my home in a Bortle 6/7 region.

Sharpless 101, the Tulip Nebula, is located in the constellation Cygnus. It is also cataloged as Ced 173 and LBN 168. It is illuminated by a young hot star listed as HD 227018 with a visible magnitude of 9.0.

NGC 6871 is a small open star cluster located to the left in my image. At magnitude 5.2 it is 5,100 light years away. It contains less than 50 young stars.

In the area around NGC 6871 are LBN 180, LBN 182, LBN 179, and LBN 174.

Cygnus X-1 is a micro quasar that consists of a star listed as HD 226868 and a very small high mass object though to be a black hole. They orbit each other with a period of 5.6 days. It is to the right of the Tulip nebula in my image.