In the image above, north is to the left and east is down.
This complex of nebulae lies some 6.000 light-years distant in the constellation Cygnus. NGC 6914 is the name of the blue combined emission/reflection nebula around three stars near the center of the image (in the dark patch), van den Bergh 132 designates the central one. Most of the other large emission nebula patches in this image seem to belong to a huge supernova shell located in the next inner spiral arm of our galaxy. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot, massive and young stars of the Cygnus OB2 association ionize the region's hydrogen gas
The nebulosity emits all of its light in isolated emission lines. The most prominent of those are the Hα, [OIII] and [SII] lines, which were exclusively recorded to obtain the image shown above. This is a "natural color" composition mixed so that the resulting colors are close to the visible spectrum of the human eye. The following mixture was used:
Central Cygnus Region, zoom lens photograph.
NGC 6914 and vdB 132 Region in Hα, which is part of this image.
NGC 6914 and vdB 132, Newtonian photograph.
Exposure Data
