SH2-124, A Emission Nebula in Cygnus

 Sharpless 124, an Emission Nebula in Cygnus This is an emission nebula in the Cygnus constellation which is in the northern end of the summer Milky Way. Cygnus the swan is also known as the Northern Cross and Deneb at the top of the cross is western end of the summer triangle formed also by Vega and Altair. The Sharpless catalog is a group of objects that  are known as emission nebulas dominated by Hydrogen emission. Sh2-124 is 10,000 light years away and the central feature looks like the Trifid nebula(Messier 20) but is not nearly as bright.The image was taken with the 6″ Takahashi  FS152 and the Finger Lakes Instrument’s PL16803 camera and is a combination of 140 images taken over 70 hours. It was taken with atomic filters which are receptive to emission from hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms. The emission comes from these atoms which are excited by uv radiation form nearby stars and then re-emit light at their characteristic wavelength. The filters in the camera are tuned to receive only light at these wavelengths. In this case the green is from hydrogen emission, red is from sulfur emission, and blue is from oxygen emission.A new technique was used in the processing. StarNet++ was used to remove the stars from the image. The image was then noise reduced using Define and then the stars were put back in. The effect was to lower the noise in the nebula without diminishing the stars.

This object looks to me as a cat with its green head on its hind legs reaching up and scratching a reddish rug. The 70 hours that took to take this image is a record for the longest time for one of my images.