SH2-101 - The Tulip Nebula Astrophotography from the backyard
Updated: Jul 24
Sh2-101 is an emission nebula in Cygnus. It is known as the Tulip Nebula because of its flower-like shape and bright colors. 🌷 Sh2-101 is surrounded by lots of nebulous gas, making it a great target for any size of telescope.
Object Designation: Sh2-101
Also known as: The Tulip Nebula
Constellation: Cygnus
Object Type: Emission Nebula
Distance: 6,000 light-years away
Magnitude: 9.0
Discovered in: 1959
Sharpless 101 gets its glow from the hot young star HD 227018 visible within the Tulip. Sh2-101 is a popular astrophotography target not only because of the amount of gas all around, but because it is very close to Cygnus X-1, a micro-quasar and galactic X-ray source that was most likely the first black hole every discovered from such a source. In photographs, the bow shockwave of extremely hot gas seems to escape from the center of the Tulip.
The Tulip Nebula with a Newtonian Reflector Telescope from the City
July 2024
We photographed the Tulip Nebula from our backyard in the Summer of 2024, this time using a reflector telescope!
We spent a total of four nights on it using the Apertura CarbonStar 150, a 6" Newtonian which we reviewed here. We used our cooled color camera with an Askar Duoband filter.
The nebula fits perfectly in the field of view of this telescope and camera combo, and so much gasses can be seen all around!
Sh2-101 in narrowband
Want to process your images following our own workflow? Get our guide HERE!
GEAR USED:
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC-Duo
Telescope: Apertura CarbonStar 150
Mount: ZWO AM5
Accessories: ASIAir
Power: Apertura Lithium Battery
Processing: Pixinsight, with RC-Astro plugins
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 26 hours
Exposure Time per frame: 10 minutes
Filters: Askar 6nm Color Magic H+O Filter
Gain: 26
The Tulip Nebula Astrophotography with a Vespera Smart Telescope
July 2023
We used Vespera to image the Tulip Nebula from our backyard in early July of 2023. The moon was very bright and almost full, but we used the dual-band filter to help combat the heavy light pollution.
We spent 10 hours on the target, and processed the master files on PixInsight in order to get the best out of our data. The amount of gas that was hidden and begging to be revealed was enormous, as you can see on the comparison pic below!
Learn more about this smart telescope on our Vespera dedicated page!
The Tulip Nebula with a Monochrome Camera and Refractor Telescope
Sadly, in our image below, the shockwave is just outside of the frame and not visible. 😥
On the left is a crop on the HII region, which is the Tulip itself.
You can clearly see why it got its name. The object definitely looks like a flower and is actually even more noticeable when imaged in true color with a One-Shot-Color camera or by mapping the narrowband channels in "HSO".
In true colors, the flower glows with bright red and pink colors, like a real life tulip! 🌷
Our full uncropped image of the Tulip Nebula can be found below. It was taken from our very light polluted backyard (Bortle 9) and the total integration time is over 46 hours!
Sh2-101 from our Bortle 9 backyard in narrowband
GEAR USED:
Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MM
Telescope: Stellarvue SVX130
Mount: Paramount MyT
Guiding: ZWO ASI 290MM Mini
Accessories: Moonlite Nitecrawler focuser / Pegasus Astro Ultimate Powerbox
Power: Jackery Lithium Battery
Processing: PixInsight with RC-Astro Plugins
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 46 hours and 15 minutes
Exposure Time per frame: 5 minutes
Filters: Chroma 3nm Ha/Sii/Oiii
Gain: 139
How to find Sh2-101?
The Tulip Nebula is located in the busy constellation of the swan: Cygnus. It is close to other popular objects, like the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888), the Veil Nebula complex, the North America Nebula (NGC 7000), and the beautiful open cluster Messier 29.
To find the Tulip Nebula, look for one of the brightest stars in the Summer sky: Deneb. This star represents the tail of the swan. From there, star hope to the center star in Cygnus, very close to where NGC 6888 is located. Now slowly make your way up the long neck of the bird. The Tulip lies about halfway between the center star and the head of the swan.
Processing of the Tulip Nebula
Processing Sh2-101 was... fun! After stacking all the data, I decided to start a livestream on YouTube, and processed the image live with Galactic Hunter subscribers. It was really fun and took just over an hour an a half to be done.
Overall, it wasn't that difficult besides taking care of the background with Dynamic Background Extraction. There is just so much gas in this area of the sky that it was really difficult to guess where to place markers for the process to work properly. Besides that, it was pretty easy especially when using StarNet. Luckily, StarNet did a wonderful job at removing almost every single star!
If you are interested in learning how I process all our images, you can find our PixInsight guide HERE.
What did each single shot look like using the narrowband filters?
Below you can see what each single shot of the Tulip Nebula looks like for the three narrowband channels. We used the following filters to capture Sh2-101:
Hydrogen Alpha (left)
Sulfur II (center)
Oxygen III (right)
The Tulip Nebula - Starless
At the end of the livestream I decided to save both the regular version of the image as well as the starless one.
Below is the image of the Tulip Nebula with all the stars removed. It looks pretty great mostly because the details in the interacting gases seem to pop out much more!
To learn how to activate and use StarNet on PixInsight, check out our tutorial!
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Final Thoughts
Sh2-101 is a beautiful object in a part of the sky that is made up of insane amounts of nebulosity. The Tulip Nebula is fun to process, and can be very pretty if you are able to bring out the bright colors within it.
Have you captured the Tulip Nebula? Attach your image in the comments and let us know your acquisition details!
Clear Skies,
Galactic Hunter
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