LBN 251

This image shows a very crowded area in Cygnus. At the centre of the image is LBN 251, whose core is bluish due to a high concentration of ionized oxygen. 

The field shown in the first image (North is up) reveals many other nebulae such as LDN 892, LDN 891, LDN 894, LBN 259 and LBN 239 (Please have a look at the annotated version below).

I have not found many images of this area (In one of them the astrophotographer has named LBN 251 the "Manatee Nebula", but it does not appear that this name has been in widespread use...). 

The image is taken with narrowband filters: Halpha, S II and O III. The colours have been mapped according to the so-called Hubble palette, with SII assigned to Red, Halpha to Green and OIII to Blue.

The colour has been initially adjusted with Pixinsight's ColorCalibration tool, but then I have further tweaked the result with the NarrowbandNormalization module according to my personal taste.

The image is taken with the TOA-150 telescope and camera STL-11000M. The total exposure time is 29 hours and the image scale is 1.69 arcseconds per pixel.

In the image the stars are RGB and for them additional exposures have been collected with FSQ-106N and my second STL-11000M camera.

The second image, which is rotated 90º, shows the full widefield spanning more than 2 degrees.

Click on the images for a full resolution version, or go to the Gallery section for complete exposure details.

Image processing: Pixinsight.

Observatory automation and remote operation with Talon6.