Sh2-101, as designated in the Sharpless Catalog of HII regions, is also communally known as the Tulip Nebula^[1].  This colorful nebula is located in the constellation Cygnus the Swan at an approximate distance of 6,000 light years^[1] from the Earth.  Stewart Sharpless catalogued this spectacular nebula in his 1959 catalog^[1].

An object of much scientific interest, the microquasar Cygnus X-1^[1,2,3], is located just to the lower right of the Tulip^[4].  It is a source of intense X-Ray emission and is the site of one of the first suspected black holes^[1]. The location of Cygnus X-1, in relation to the Tulip Nebula, may be viewed here^[4].  Cygnus X-1 is a binary system comprised of a blue supergiant star (HDE 226868) orbiting a black hole with a period of 5.6 days^[3].  The black hole is pulling gas from its companion.  This gas heats to extreme temperatures as it forms an accretion disk around the black hole and is the source of intense X-rays^[4].  Not all of this gas is pulled into the black hole.  Some is expelled in the form of a jet^[4].  The jet is not visible in the image above, but a blue umbrella shaped shock wave, created by the jet colliding with interstellar matter, may be observed above Cygnus X-1^[4].

Recent research has determined the distance to Cygnus X-1 to be about 6070 light years from the Earth and the mass of the companion black hole to be about 14.8 times that of our Sun^[3].

Identified in the SIMBAD Astronomical Database, the bright star near the right edge of the image is Eta Cygni.  Under moderately dark skies it is a naked eye star with a visible magnitude of 3.889.

The image above is known as a mapped, or false, color image and was acquired using narrowband filters. It was assembled using the standard Hubble Palette with SII mapped to red, Ha mapped to green and OIII mapped to blue. The stars were imaged using RGB filters in order to portray them with a near true color appearance.