The colors in the image result from a G2V star-color-calabration procedure for the entrire image-train.

Albireo (the hen's beak, or the "beak-star" - making it the "eye" of the constellation swan) is one of the most popular binary star systems in the northern hemisphere. Being around 390 LY away from earth, this system still shines consideralby bright on the night sky at 3m9, as the major component is around 700 times brigther than our sun. The absolute diamter of this star measures around 20 times of the sun.

Observed in a standard telescope both components can be spotted easily, and looking through a larger powerful telescope the typical color of both ß Cygn A and B can then be seen successfully. Spectroscopic investigations read the larger star to match the spectral class of K3, making it an orange-red star, whereas the other one appears in a distance of 34 arc seconds and happens to be classified as B9 (deep blue).

Ever since Kitt Peak' 2.1 meter telescope focused on Cygnus A, using speckle-interferometry, it is identified to be a a double star. Its small companion is in a distance of 0.4 arc seconds.