The night sky is spectacular, but what we can see with the naked eye barely scratches the surface of what is out there. The Cygnus region, pictured here, is filled with huge and spectacular nebulae glowing at predominantly the hydrogen-alpha wavelength, 656.28 nanometers. Most cameras do not perceive this wavelength well, so to capture this image, I utilized a modified DSLR camera, and specialized optical filters targeting the hydrogen alpha wavelength. This final image involved three nights of photographing. The first night, I found the composition that I liked in the desert of Joshua Tree National Park, California. At a focal length of 50mm, the Cygnus region would be nicely framed above this large and beautiful Joshua Tree. That night, I captured eleven 2-minute exposures of the sky (totaling 22 minutes) with a star tracker, and a few minutes of exposure time of the foreground (with the star tracker off). This resulting image was OK, but I wasn’t yet happy with it; I wanted to see more detail in the nebulae. So, I spent two additional nights photographing the Cygnus region, gathering an additional 6 hours of long exposure photos. For these, I utilized a hydrogen-alpha filter that specifically targets the red colours of these nebulae. I added the data from these stacked images to the red channel of my images from the first night, to achieve this final result, showcasing the Cygnus region in all its glory.
