Gamma Cygni Nebula Complex

25. Aug. 2025

Gear used

• Telescope: Samyang 135mm cameralens at f/2.8
• Filter: Optolong L-enhance
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC pro
• Guidescope: Uniguide 32
• Guidecamera: ZWO ASI220MM Mini
• Mount: ZWO AM5N
• Controls: ASIAIR Plus

Data collected

• Sky: Bortle 4 to 5
• Lights: 220 x 180s
• Biases: 30
• Darks: 20
• Flats: 30

Uncertain Conditions

Clear, moonless nights were in the forecast. But what do you do when the forecast changes every minute, and you don’t know how much time you’ll actually have to image the cosmos?

My solution: go out with the fastest optics I own. That way, when the clouds roll in, no matter how much data I managed to capture, I’ll still have something worth the effort. So once again, I reached for the Samyang 135mm telephoto lens, a classic in the astrophotography community for good reason.

This time, however, I was surprised: the weather held for a full two nights. Even though the season only gives me about 6.5 hours of astronomical darkness per night, the speed of the Samyang makes that more than enough to create a solid image. After two nights, I ended up with 11 hours of clean data, plenty to reveal even some of the faintest objects in the frame.