December 26, 2012 – The Amazing Sky

The current night sky contains another seasonal sight, a cluster of stars called the Christmas Tree Cluster. Turn the image upside down and you might see it!

The bright star lies at the base of the Christmas tree and at the bottom of a tall triangle of blue and yellow stars that outlines – or decorates – the tree. At the top of the tree sits the dark Cone Nebula. The Tree also encompasses a bright blue dusty nebula reflecting the light of nearby stars and swirls of pink glowing hydrogen. At right sits a rich cluster of stars dimmed yellow by intervening dust. At bottom (south) in this photo you can also see a small V-shaped object. That’s Hubble’s Variable Nebula, a dust cloud studied by Edwin Hubble, one that varies in intensity with fluctuations in the main star embedded at its tip.

This rich area of sky lies above (north of) the subject of my previous post, the Rosette Nebula in the constellation of Monoceros the Unicorn. Very little of this is visible to the eye. The magic of photography is how it coaxes detail out of the sky that the eye alone cannot see.

This is the Rosette Nebula, a celestial wreath 5,000 light years in the northern winter sky.

It is one of the most photogenic of nebulas, but is barely visible to even an aided eye as a ghostly grey arc of light around the central star cluster. Winds from the group of hot stars at the centre of the Rosette are blowing a hole in the cloud, creating the wreath-like shape of the Rosette.

While I shot this earlier this month from Australia, the Rosette lies far enough north in the constellation of Monoceros that northerners can see this cosmic wreath on any dark and clear winter night. It makes a beautiful decoration in our holiday sky.

Happy holidays to all!