North America

Credit: Davide De Mar­tin (ESA/Hub­ble), the ESA/ESO/NASA Pho­to­shop FITS Lib­er­a­tor & Dig­i­tized Sky Sur­vey 2

It’s a famil­iar shape but the loca­tion is out of this world. To astronomers gaz­ing at NGC 7000 through earth-bound tele­scopes, this emis­sion neb­ula resem­bled North Amer­ica. Can you find Florida? The Gulf of Mex­ico. To the right of the neb­ula is the fainter Pel­i­can Neb­ula. Divid­ing the two neb­ula is a dark, thick cloud of dust. Stars within the cloud, hid­den from astronomers, cause hydro­gen gas to glow red and pink. Share the crit­ters and shapes you find in the nebula.

Did you know that astronomers color with light?

This image of the North Amer­ica Neb­ula was not taken by NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope. The image is actu­ally many black-and-white images stitched together taken with the Palo­mar Observatory’s 48-inch Samuel Oschin Tele­scope. Astronomers then col­ored the image using two pho­to­graphic plates; one sen­si­tive to red light, the other sen­si­tive to blue light. When astronomers put the two plates together, they get a color image, sim­i­lar to the way your com­puter mon­i­tor or tele­vi­sion com­bines red, green and blue to make all the col­ors that you see. Some­times astronomers use the color palette, or groups of col­ors, in Hub­ble images to col­orize black-and-white images as well. The image was taken as part of the sec­ond National Geo­graphic Palo­mar Obser­va­tory Sky Sur­vey. It cov­ers an area in the sky four times larger than a full Moon.

If you go out to a dark site dur­ing the North­ern Hemi­sphere sum­mer, you might catch a glimpse of the North Amer­ica Neb­ula through binoc­u­lars. Look for a small fuzzy patch north­east of the bright star Deneb in the con­stel­la­tion Cygnus the Swan. Cygnus is also known as the North­ern Cross. Deneb is a young, bright, blue super­giant star and is one of the bright­est stars in the sum­mer sky. It makes up the tail of Cygnus and is one of the stars of the Sum­mer Triangle.

The North Amer­ica Neb­ula lies about 1,500 light-years away from Earth. And if you were to fly at the speed of light across the neb­ula, it would take 50 years to reach the other side.

Comments

SK 13-10-2009, 09:17

WOW! I can see the Amer­i­cas so clearly in this image! I really enjoy the clar­ity and the abil­ity to zoom around ‘inside’ the image!

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