This image was produced from a series of exposures taken in June, 2024. It shows the part of the sky that surrounds the bright star Sadr, which you can find in the constellation of Cygnus – the swan. You can see Sadr very clearly – it’s the biggest and brightest star in the image, just above and to the right of center. Although we’re calling this the Sadr region, much of the colorful nebula you see here is actually nowhere near Sadr. It’s mostly in the background, more than a couple of hundred light years beyond the big star. The section I’ve photographed is just below what’s called the Butterfly Nebula – you can just make out the lower portions of the insect’s wings, to either side of the dark zone stretching from the center to the top. This is called an emission nebula, since it consists of ionized gas, energized by the stellar winds from nearby stars. It is more than two thousand light years from Earth. The star, Sadr, is huge – about 150 times bigger than the Sun.
