IC 5068 is an emission nebula in Cygnus which is often overlooked because of its brighter and much more prominent neighbors, the North American and the Pelican Nebulae. It has, however, interesting features in the form of curtain-like dust lanes which streak across the brighter patches of nebulosity in various directions. I have taken a narrow-band color image of the nebula in my backyard: IC 5068, in Hα, [OIII] and [SII] filters, near-natural color rendition. This is the result of 5 nights in the late summer of 2011 under a city sky additionally brightened by moonlight. See also the Hα grayscale version.

IC 1311 is a galactic star cluster surrounded by a huge region of nebulosity located west of the bright star Sadr in the constellation Cygnus. I have taken a narrow-band color image of the nebula in my backyard: IC 1311 and Surrounding Nebulosity, in Hα, [OIII] and [SII] filters, near-natural color rendition. This is the result of 5 nights in the summer of 2011 under a city sky additionally brightened by moonlight. See also the Hα grayscale version.

Another nice narrow-band color image taken in my backyard: NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula, in Hα, [OIII] and [SII] filters, near-natural color rendition. This is the result of 4 nights under a city sky additionally brightened by moonlight and partially clouded. For those conditions, the image is remarkable. See also the Hα grayscale version.

See the result of 7 nights of hard work in my garden in the summer of 2011, which I spent taking exposures with my 4.9" Wright-Newtonian and fighting off mosquitoes... Voilą: NGC 7000, the North American Nebula, in narrow-band Hα, [OIII] and [SII] filters, near-natural color rendition. More than 13 hours of total exposure went into this image, and almost the same amount of time at the computer to process the raw data. See also the Hα version and the enlargement of the "Gulf of Mexico" region.

The Northern Part of Cygnus, a Milky Way DSLR photo taken with a Nikon zoom lens set to 50mm last year during my stay at the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße in August 2011. This photo finally finishes the series of astrophotos taken there.

Howdii's report about the GSO 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien which he collimated and tested in November and December 2011. Read his Test Report (in German) about this telescope. This telescope comes with a 2" Monorail focuser that proved inadequate, so Howdii exchanged it for a 2,5" Moonlite focuser. He had some trouble with fine-tuning the collimation of the RC and was delayed by bad weather, so he had no time for photographic tests. The visual performance was quite good after all improvements, especially so when considering the high linear obstruction of 46%.