Photo of the Week for August 18, 2017
One of the brightest stretches of the northern Milky Way runs through the centre of Cygnus the swan. The region southwest of Gamma Cygni is especially rich with faint nebulosity, including the Crescent Nebula, NGC6888. To some it’s also known as Van Gogh’s Ear, in honour of the famous (and troubled) artist’s severed appendage. But to see the nebulous crescent (or ear) well, you need a dark country sky and a scope equipped with a narrow-band nebula filter.
This 1½-degree-wide view of the Crescent and surrounding region was captured by Chris Talpas from his home in Milton, Ontario. To make this bicolour image, Chris used an Explore Scientific ES102 apochromatic refractor telescope and ZWO ASI1600 camera to record the 200 minutes total exposure through H-alpha and OIII filters (100 minutes each).
