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Pelican Nebula

The Pelican Nebula is listed as IC 5070 and IC 5067 in the Index Catalogue.  Named for its resemblance to a pelican, the nebula is associated with the neighbouring North America Nebula (NGC 7000) and is one of several notable nebulae found in the area of the Northern Cross. It is an active star forming region with a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The position and balance of the stars and gas will gradually change to leave the nebula looking completely different millions of years from now. The nebula is found along the curve of the celestial pelican’s head and neck. It is a ridge of emission spanning about 10 light years, home to many newly formed stars. The Pelican Nebula lies at a distance of 1,800 light years and has a visual magnitude of 8.0.  It occupies an area of 60′ x 50′ and is separated from the considerably larger North America Nebula by a dark molecular cloud. The two nebulae are parts of the same interstellar cloud of ionized hydrogen, or
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Pacman Nebula

NGC 281 is an H II region in the constellation of Cassiopeia and part of the Perseus Spiral Arm. It includes the open cluster IC 1590, the multiple star HD 5005, and several Bok globules. Colloquially, it is known as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character. The nebula was discovered in August 1883 by E. E. Barnard, who described it as "a large faint nebula, very diffuse." The multiple star HD 5005, also called \beta1, was discovered by S. W. Burnham. It consists of an 8th-magnitude primary with four companions at distances between 1.4 and 15.7 seconds of arc. There has been no appreciable change in this quintuple system since the first measurements were made in 1875. Previous attempt using my DSLR.
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Fish Nebula

The Fish Head Nebula (IC 1795) is an area of new star formation with glowing gas and dust, in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It is actually a portion of the larger Heart Nebula complex (IC 1805) that is located about 6000 light-years from earth. The brighter region of IC 1795 is designated NGC 896 and is the home to many massive, young, stars.  These stars radiate copious amounts of ultraviolet light.  This UV radiation excites the surrounding gas and causes it shine much the same way as a neon light emits its colorful hues.
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North America Nebula

The North America Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20 Catalogue) is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb (the tail of the swan and its brightest star). The remarkable shape of the nebula resembles that of the continent of North America, complete with a prominent Gulf of Mexico. The North America Nebula is large, covering an area of more than four times the size of the full moon; but its surface brightness is low, so normally it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The Cygnus's Wall is a term for the "Mexico and Central America part" of the North America Nebula. The Cygnus Wall exhibits the most concentrated star formations in the nebula. The distance of the nebula complex is not precisely known, but some estimate it to be about 1800 Light years, based on estimates that nearby Deneb is the source for  ionizing the hydrogen so that it emits light. If Deneb is responsible then its absolute size (6° apparent diameter on the sky) would be 100 light years
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Eastern Veil

The Eastern Veil Nebula or C33 is is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant.  It has been determined to be about 2400 light-years distant from the earth and is based on direct astrometric measurements. The Veil Nebula is expanding at a velocity of about 1.5 million kilometres per hour. Using images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 1997 and 2015, the expansion of the Veil Nebula has been directly observed. The same telescope captured several images of the nebula. The analysis of the emissions from the nebula indicates the presence of oxygen, sulfur, and hydrogen. It is also a strong emitter of radio waves and x-rays.  In the image below with is a HOO colour pallet, the red is for Hydrogen and the blue is for Oxygen.   
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Western Veil Nebula

Western Veil Nebula or (NGC6960 or C34 Catalogue) is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. This is part of the constellation is sometime referred to as the Witches Broom Nebula.   HOO colour on the left and Natural colour on the Right. What you see in the image above is visible portions of the Cygnus loop which is a large but relatively faint supernova remnant. The source supernova exploded some 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, and the remnants have since expanded to cover an area 36 times the area of the full moon. The analysis of the emissions from the nebula indicate the presence of oxygen, sulfur, and hydrogen. This is also one of the largest, brightest features in the x-ray sky. The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, but Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) data supports a distance of about 1,470 light-years. The bright star in the centre of the broom is the naked eye star 52 Cygni in Cygnus. As a future project, I would like to imag
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Abell 31 Planetary Nebula

Abell 31 (Sharp Catalogue 2 - 290) is a planetary nebula of nearly ten light-years wide, located about 2,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cancer. Although it is one of the largest planetary nebulae of the sky, Abell 31 is not very bright. It is a very ancient nebula and its gas has already started to disperse into space. Its central star is a tiny white dwarf (about 4 times bigger than Earth or about 0.04 times the size of the Sun), which is incredibly hot, about 85,000° Celsius (150,000°F). It has about half the mass of the Sun, meaning it probably started out life as a star with about twice the mass of our Sun, and lost the rest as it aged and its stellar winds blew its outer envelope away. Judging from how fast those winds are blowing outward, the star probably started dying about 130,000 years ago, after a billion or more years of normal life. The nebula is moving through space at a relatively high speed. The direction of motion is toward the southern part of
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Propeller Nebula

The Propeller Nebula (Simeis 57) is part of a vast and rich HII-region in Cygnus, known as Cygnus X Complex. The Propeller Nebula is located close to Gamma Cygni in the direction of north-east. The propeller shape is actually a small portion of a much larger emission nebula, which can be seen as faint red hydrogen-alpha nebulosity throughout the image frame.  The Propeller Nebula is probably about 5,500 light-years away from Earth.Like many emission nebulae in Cygnus, the Propeller is part of the giant molecular cloud, the Cygnus X, which is about 4600 light-years apart from the Solar System.  There is another, much more closer dark molecular cloud between it and us, in a distance of about 300 light-years, called the Cygnus Rift, which makes its observation much more difficult. Cygnus Rift can be observed by the naked eye under dark skies: it is the dark strip dividing the Milky Way into two parts, spanning from Cygnus to Sagittarius. The enormous quantity of dust and plasma contained
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Monkey Head Nebula

The Monkey Head Nebula, categorised as NGC 2174 (in NGC Catalogue) is an HII emission nebula located in the constellation Orion and is associated with the open star cluster.  The nebula may have formed through hierarchical collapse. An interstellar cloud of gas will remain in balance as long as the kinetic energy of the gas pressure is in balance with the potential energy of the internal gravitational force. i.e the movement of the gas in the cloud, offsets the pull of gravity to collapse the cloud. During a massive cloud collapse dozens to tens of thousands of stars form more or less simultaneously which is observable in star clusters. The end product of a core collapse is an open cluster of stars, which then start to drift away from the cloud.  This is sometimes known as a stellar nursery nebula. It is thought to be located about 6,400 light-years away from Earth, which means that this light left the nebula at the time that Abraham was alive, it travelled through space at the speed o
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Bode and Cigar Galaxy

M81 Bode Galaxy and M82 Cigar Galaxy are tidally locked to each other and interact with each other to create galaxies with rich star formations. M81, the Bode Galaxy is the spiral galaxy, which faces us side on, as is found in the constellation Ursa Major. It is in the local group of galaxies and is of close proximity to Earth with a large size and active galactic nucleus, which harbours a 70 million M supermassive black hole. It is located 11.6 million light-years from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 6.9. Through a pair of binoculars, the galaxy appears as a faint patch of light in the same field of view as M82. A small telescope will resolve M81’s core. The galaxy is best observed during April.   The galaxy’s spiral arms, which wind all the way down into its nucleus, are made up of young, bluish, hot stars formed in the past few million years. They also host a population of stars formed in an episode of star formation that started about 600 million years ago. Ultraviolet light
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Leo Triplet Galaxies

The Leo Triplet Galaxies is a small group of galaxies about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy group consists of the spiral galaxies M65, M66, and NGC 3628. The famous Leo Triplet, a small group of galaxies are in the constellation Leo and are about 35 to 36 million light-years away. These galaxies gravitationally interact with each other and there is some warping that occurs because of it. M65 is low in dust and gas, and there is little star formation in it, although there has been some relatively recently in the arms. The ratio of old stars to new stars is correspondingly quite high. It is about 95 thousand light-years across with striking dust lanes and bright star clusters along sweeping spiral arms. NGC 3628 has an approximately 300,000 light-years long tidal tail.  Its most conspicuous feature is the broad and obscuring band of dust located along the outer edge of its spiral arms, effectively transecting the galaxy to our view. The first image is  3
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Heart Nebula

The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, is some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel on 3 November 1787. It is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes. 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. 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, these are nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun's mass. 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. The shape of the nebula is driven by stellar winds from the hot stars in its core. The nebula also spans almost 2 degrees in the sk
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