The eastern part of the constellation Cygnus is a beautiful Summer Milky Way area full of innumerable multi-colored stars and many large emission nebulae, most of which are located quite nearby in the Cygnus arm of our galaxy. The part of Cygnus pictured here is dominated by three bright stars: α Cygni, called Deneb, is the bright star located in the upper right quarter of the picture; γ Cygni, called Sadr, which is located above and slighty to the right of the image's center; and ε Cygni, called Gienah, located to the left and slightly below the image's center. The naked eye appearance of Cygnus is quite impressive, no less than 146 individual stars are visible to the unaided eye in a clear summer night. The areas in Cygnus where appear to be less stars are in fact obscured by dust in the spiral arm.

With a decent rich-field telescope a skilled observer is able to observe the brighter nebulae apparent in this photograph. There are too many emission nebulae in this image to give the individual numbers, but three major groups are distinguishable: The North American/Pelican Regionneast (left in this image) of Deneb, the γ Cygni Region around Sadr, and fainter stuff west (right) of Deneb. The best-known members of the first group are the North American Nebula NGC 7000 with its unmistakable resemblance to the North American continent, it is just bisected by the image's upper edge, and the Pelican Nebula IC 5067-5070 located in "mid-Atlantic" relative to NGC 7000, so to speak. The most prominent member of the γ Cygni nebulosity are IC 1318, the bi-sected Butterfly Nebula immediately northeast of Sadr and NGC 6888, the small Crescent Nebula three degrees south and slightly west of Sadr (a small arc of nebulosity).

Another remarkable object in this photograph is the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant, south of ε Cygni, which forms a loop, the eastern and westen part of the loop are well defined.

Click the Zoom-in links below for overview photographs of each of the three major groups of nebulosity in central Cygnus mentioned above.

The Milky Way in Cygnus, zoom lens photograph.