In the image above, north is to the right and east is up.

The central 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 region is dominated by two bright stars: Alpha, called Deneb, is the bright star located in the upper right quarter of the picture; and Gamma, called Sadr, which is located just above 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 emission 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 Region east (up in this image) of Deneb, the γ Cygni Region around Sadr, and fainter stuff southwest (below) 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).

The Milky Way in Cygnus, zoom lens photograph.