Sadr Gamma Cygni

 

Pip Stakkert used two cameras; an astro-modded Canon 200d DSLR and an un-modded Canon 600d DSLR and a Samyang F2 135mm fixed lens to image the area around the star Sadr in the constellation Cygnus. The data was processed and stacked by Jolene McSquint-Fleming using Affinity Photo 2 (with James Ritson's macros), GraXpert AI and Starnet GUI. The sets of data were combined using Registar software and star diffraction effects were added using StarSpikes Pro4.

Credit: Astrometry. net

Spectral Profile of the  F8 spectral class star Sadr -Captured and processed
at the Jodrell Plank Observatory
by Kurt Thrust on the 26-08-2024 using the transmission grating spectrometer
designed and constructed by our resident engineer Jolene McSquint-Fleming

"Sadr is visible to the naked from the Northern Hemisphere during the summer and early autumn. It appears as a yellowish white star some 1800 light years distant and sits at he intersection of the stars in the constellation Cygnus, which make the asterism 'The Northern Cross'. The Sadr region sits within the Summer Milky Way and is awash with ionised gas and dark dust lanes. Two nebulae of note are  IC1318 (also known as the Butterfly Nebula) and NGC6888 (aka the Crescent Nebula).

Sadr is a beast of a Super Giant star with a mass over 14 times and a radius of over 180 times that of our Sun. It is on the 'main sequence', is fusing hydrogen at its core at a prodigious rate and emitting energy 133,00 times faster than the Sun. It is also the A component of a gravitationally bound multi-star system. 

NGC 6910 is a lose open star cluster first discovered by John Herschel and is located east-north--east of Sadr. It requires a telescope or large binoculars to resolve individual stars.

The Crescent Nebula (Credit: The Robotic PIRATE Telescope, Open Observatories, telescope .org Image captured remotely by Kurt Thrust.
with annotation identifying the Wolf-Rayet star HD192163 or WR136

If you look carefully at our top widefield image of the region around Sadr you will notice the Crescent Nebula and the Wolf Rayet star towards it's centre. The Crescent Nebula is approximately 5000 light years distant. It has been formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star colliding with  the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant some hundreds of thousands of years ago. The collision has created a shell and two shock waves, one moving outward and one moving inward. The inward moving shock wave heats the stellar wind to X-ray-emitting temperatures. Jolene hopes in the very near future to capture the spectral profile of a Wolf Rayet star, which exhibit high temperatures and broad spectral emission lines of ionised; Helium, Nitrogen and Carbon. ". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.