#Nebula in cassiopeia Patch#
#Nebula in cassiopeia full#

This entire region is ablaze at infrared wavelengths in professional scopes, a consequence of bright new stars embedded in the gas of dust of this patch of Milky Way. With the camera, the nebula appears as two semicircles of reddish light bifurcated by LN889, a dark lane of dust that obscures further nebulosity behind it. This massive complex lies near the star Sadr, named after the Arabic “Al Sadr al Dajāja” (the Hen’s Breast).

While the Veil Nebula represents the end-stage of a star’s life, the Butterfly Nebula (IC 1318) lies at the other end of the ecological spectrum of star formation in the Milky Way. Tonight, I grabbed a quick image of the eastern Veil, NGC 6992, with its intricate lacework generated when a shockwave from a massive supernova explosion collided with the rarefied gas of the interstellar medium. So I began my observations where I always do in this constellation, with the Veil Nebula, an object so beautiful I can’t help myself to visit it whenever I tour this part of the sky. My chosen camera had a limited field of view, too small for the most famous nebula in Cygnus, the North America Nebula (NGC 7000, seen at top and image with a larger-sensor camera). Instead of visual observing, I left my eyepieces in the bag and instead engaged in a little ‘snapshot astrophotography’, taking simple image of each nebula in a few minutes to record my observations… and to share them with you! The Eastern Veil Nebula The nebula doesn’t appear brighter, but it does have better contrast against fish-grey urban and suburban skies. These nebulae make ideal targets for urban stargazers like me because their contrast is readily enhanced with a good light pollution filter which passes their emission while reducing the effect of urban light pollution. Which is what I was doing on a cool northern autumn night as I toured the celestial Swan, looking for a handful of pretty emission nebulae that radiate a deep red light and stand out along the rich star field in this part of the sky. In dark sky, with a pair of binoculars or wide-field telescope, a contemplative stargazer can spend many happy hours hopping from object to object, wondering why more people turn their eyes skyward more often. There’s everything here: emission nebula, supernova remnants, open star clusters, star clouds, and dark nebulae that reach like intertwined fingers over the bright and unresolved star clouds in this part of the sky. Like many constellations along the arc of the Milky Way, the constellation Cygnus harbors an embarrassment of celestial riches.

#Nebula in cassiopeia full#

The nebula also spans almost 2 degrees in the sky, covering an area four times that of the diameter of the full moon.The North America Nebula (on its side) and above it the Pelican Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The shape of the nebula is driven by stellar winds from the hot stars in its core. The Heart Nebula is also made up of ionised oxygen and sulfur gasses, responsible for the rich blue and orange colours seen in narrowband images. This open cluster of stars, known as Collinder 26 or Melotte 15, contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of the Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of the Sun's mass. The nebula's intense red output and its morphology are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's center. The brightest part of the nebula (a knot at its western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of the nebula to be discovered. It displays glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes. It was discovered by William Herschel on 3 November 1787. The Heart Nebula (also known as the Running dog nebula, IC 1805, Sharpless 2-190) is an emission nebula, 7500 light years away from Earth and located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. Heart Nebula, with Fish Head Nebula on top right corner, narrowband image captured on a 70mm scope