There is just so much goodness in this widefield photo, I don’t even know where to start! So, let’s start with what this is not: visible light (mostly). The majority of what you see is near-infrared light being emitted by ionized hydrogen gas. If we could see near-IR light, the night sky would look completely different, including the Cygnus Constellation, which is where this region resides.

This photograph is made of four individual panels, representing a swath of sky totaling 5 degrees (or the width of three fingers at arm’s length).

At the heart of this photo, is the center of the swan (Cygnus). The star, Sadr, is the center of the cross asterism, and stands out in the photo as the brightest star.

Just to the left of Sadr, is the Butterfly Nebula, or Gamma Cygni Nebula (IC 1318). The bands of dusty dark nebulae block light coming from the “puddles” of ionized hydrogen behind.

Moving to the bottom-right quadrant, we see the brighter “brain”. This is the Crescent Nebula, NGC 6888, a Wolf-Rayet star. (See that panel in its own photograph).

Each panel took about 3 hours of exposure time, totaling 12 hours, for those not-so-adept-in-math viewers. That may seem like a lot, but it pales in comparison to the amount of time to integrate the panels. First, I had to inspect every individual photo making up each panel. That’s 36 photos—per PANEL! Then, stack the photos to make each panel. After that, comes the careful process of a “histogram stretch”, color correction, and white/black point balance, just to make sure every panel is the exact same. Then, I stitched them together (thank you Photoshop!) to begin processing yet again. Overall, I’d easily estimate a total of 48 hours of processing time went into this photo. Not that I need to say it, but please be respectful of this, before trying to steal this photo, or any photo from ANY artist.