North America Nebula – The Amazing Sky

The centre of Cygnus is laced with an intricate complex of glowing gas clouds.

This is another shot from earlier this week, under ideal skies, in a view looking straight up into Cygnus the Swan. This is a telephoto lens shot of the amazing array of nebulas in central Cygnus, around the bright star Deneb.

At left is the North America and Pelican Nebulas. At right is the Gamma Cygni complex and the little Crescent Nebula at lower right.

Here we’re looking down our local Cygnus-Orion arm of the Milky Way into a region of star formation rich in glowing hydrogen gas and dark interstellar dust. These clouds lie about 1500 to 3000 light years away. Dotting the field are hot blue stars newly formed from the raw ingredients making stars in Cygnus.

At top, the clouds have a lacework appearance, like sections of bubbles. Perhaps these are being blown across space by the high-velocity winds streaming from the young stars.

Shining overhead on northern summer nights right now is the blue supergiant star Deneb, in Cygnus. Nearby glow the magenta clouds of the North America Nebula.

This image shot with a telephoto lens takes in roughly the same field of view as a pair of binoculars. But being a long time exposure it reveals much more of the faint nebula than even the aided eye can see. However, even binoculars will show a greyish cloud near Deneb in roughly the shape of North America. It is actually a continent of stars and hydrogen gas, glowing with hydrogen’s characteristic magenta colour, a mix of deep red and blue emission lines. The gas may be electrified into glowing by the searing radiation from the star Deneb, some 1400 light years away from Earth.

I shot this on a July night, with some haze passing by during some of the exposures. The haze added the photogenic glows around the stars.