I have always wanted to image Albireo – so the other week I captured some photons from it. This image is only 33mins integration – I captured it whilst waiting for my other target to rise in the night sky.

It is in the constellation of Cygnus and is the faintest star in what is known as the Northern Cross.

I learnt something new when studying up on Albireo over the last few days. It is in fact a three star system, in the late 1970’s it was discovered that the brighter yellow star is actually two stars, a binary system (a true one) – sadly, my Telescope isn’t powerful enough to separate them out, I would need to buy an approx 80 inch scope to do that – my Bank manager says No to that :)

If you look at it with the naked eye it looks like one star but with a low magnification telescope you can see it as two stars. In my image taken using an 8” scope you can see a brighter yellow star (Beta Cygni A) and a fainter blue one (Beta Cygni B) – the contrast in colours is beautiful. Some people think they maybe a true Binary system - Binary stars orbit around each other, if they are a binary system then their orbital period would be 100,000+ years. However, some think it probable that they are an optical double star i.e. they look close together from earth but one is further ‘out’ from from the other one and we perceive them to be ‘close’ to one and other.

Software:

DSS (Deep Sky Stacker) then PixInsight and a few final tweaks in Photoshop & Topaz DeNoise.

Clear skies all

Martina