Photo of the Week for June 1, 2018
Central Cygnus is awash in nebulosity—so much so that individual objects can be difficult to appreciate, or even locate. But NGC6888 (popularly known as the Crescent Nebula) is fairly easy to spot in this long-exposure image by astrophotographer Tudor Chibacu.
The nebula’s distinctive shape and relative brightness are also the reason it’s a popular target for deep-sky observers. However, seeing the Crescent for yourself requires dark skies and a telescope equipped with a narrow-band eyepiece filter.
Tudor captured this 3-degree-wide view of the Crescent and surrounding region from Kingston, Ontario. He used a William Optics 71mm apochromatic refractor telescope (working at f/4.7) and a QHY163M camera to record 5 hours of exposure data with a H-alpha filter and 6 hours with an OIII filter for this bicolour image.
