Photo of the Week for December 4, 2015

One of the brightest stretches of the northern Milky Way runs through the centre of Cygnus the swan. The region is rich with faint nebulosity, including the Crescent Nebula, NGC6888. To some it’s also known as Van Gogh’s Ear, named in honour of the famous (and troubled) artist’s severed appendage. But to see the nebulous crescent (or ear) well, you need dark skies and a scope equipped with a narrow-band nebula filter.

Astrophotographer Richard Henderson captured this image of NGC6888 in November, 2015, from his home observatory in Chatham, Ontario. He used a SBIG STL-11000M CCD camera affixed to a TMB 130mm f/7 apochromatic refractor telescope to record exposures totalling 8 hours through Ha and OIII filters.