  The Cygnus region harbours a huge complex of massive stars at a distance of
1.0-2.0kpc from us. About 170 O stars are distributed over several OB
associations, among which the Cyg OB2 cluster is by far the largest with about
100-120 O stars. As a consequence of their successive nuclear-burning episodes,
these massive stars inject large quantities of radioactive nuclei into the
interstellar medium such as 26Al and 60Fe. The gamma-ray line signal from the
latter is a solid tracer of ongoing nucleosynthesis. We want to compare the
decay emission from the Cygnus region with predictions of recently improved
stellar models. As a first step, we establish observational constraints upon
the gamma-ray line emission from 26Al and 60Fe, with particular emphasis placed
on separating the emission due to the Cygnus complex from the foreground and
background mean Galactic contributions. We used the high-resolution gamma-ray
spectrometer INTEGRAL/SPI to analyse the 26Al and 60Fe decay signal from the
Cygnus region. The weak gamma-ray line emissions at 1809 and 1173/1332keV have
been characterised in terms of photometry, spectrometry, and source morphology.
The 1809keV emission from Cygnus is centred on the position of the Cyg OB2
cluster and has a typical size of 9 degrees or more. The total 1809keV flux
from the Cygnus region is (6.0 +/- 1.0) x10e-5 ph/cm2/s, but the flux really
attributable to the Cygnus complex reduces to (3.9 +/- 1.1) x10e-5 ph/cm2/s.
The 1809keV line centroid is agrees with expectations considering the direction
and distance of the Cygnus complex, and the line width is consistent with
typical motions of the interstellar medium. No decay emission from 60Fe has
been observed from the Cygnus region and an upper limit of 1.6 x10e-5 ph/cm2/s
was derived.
