The Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101)

The Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101) is another cool object in the constellation Cygnus. It’s classified as an emissions nebula with lots of rich Hydrogen gas. The object itself is about 6000 light-years from us. It was cataloged by Stewart Sharpless as part of his Sh2 catalog of objects. There are some cool things about the Tulip, most notably that it contains a 15 solar mass blackhole called Cygnus X-1, the first truly documented blackhole. The blackhole has a companion supergiant star that is a part of the binary system. Because the star and blackhole are so close there is actually stellar mass transfer happening where the gravity of the blackhole is literally sucking, like a vacuum, gas and matter off the companion feeding the blackhole. 

In my image, the binary looks like a single star, but I’ve circled it for reference. 

I’ve got two versions of this image, both using narrowband filters. The first one attached combines the Hydrogen alpha, Oxygen 3, and Sulfur 2 data sets into an SHO (Hubble Pallet) version while the second only combines the Ha and O3 into a HOO color image. 

I did have some issues with my mount and the excessive backlash in it that I have had to provide some tuning to it to clear it out. So if you zoom in enough you will see some elongated stars which is a result of the mount issues. 

Cygnus X-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1

Clear image of the binary system: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170216.html

Sh2-101: https://www.constellation-guide.com/tulip-nebula/