Celestial Tulips
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Added 1662918351 by Heavenly Bodies Studio.
This is the Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101) and X1 micro-quasar imaged from my garden in Wiltshire. The nebula is mostly emissions from ionised Hydrogen, with some contribution from Oxygen and a bit of Sulphur.
A micro-quasar, comprised of a star and a small black hole, is located just to the left of the 'Tulip'. Relativistic jets, very powerful jets of plasma with velocities very close to the speed of light, emanate from the accretion disk of the black hole, creating a shock front in the inter-stellar material - this is observed as the blue arc to the left of the Tulip.
Interesting facts: the microquasar star, HDE 226868, and its associated black hole orbit each other in a period of 5.8 days. The black hole has been shown to have a mass of around 15x the mass of our sun and a diameter of only around 45km.
This is 13.5 hours of 20-minute exposures.
High resolution at: https://www.astrobin.com/ym25ir/
Imaging telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 100 ED
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro