Astronomy Picture of the Day
Posted By admin On October 13, 2011 @ 10:06 pm In Photo Essays | Comments Disabled
[1]Image Credit & Copyright [2]: Bob and Janice Fera (Fera Photography [3])
Explanation: This sharp cosmic portrait [4] features glowing gas and obscuring dust [5] clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia [6]. Also cataloged as NGC 896, the nebula’s remarkable details, shown in its dominant red color, were captured using a sensitive camera, and long exposures that include image data from a narrowband filter. The narrow filter transmits only H-alpha light [7], the red light of hydrogen atoms. Ionized by ultraviolet light from energetic young stars, a hydrogen atom emits the characteristic H-alpha light as its single electron is recaptured and transitions to lower energy states. Not far on the sky from the famous Double Star Cluster [8] in Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula [9], as part of a complex of star forming regions [10] that lie at the edge of a large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy [11]. At that distance, this picture would span about 70 light-years across IC 1795.
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URL to article: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/2011/10/13/astronomy-picture-of-the-day-74/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Ngc896dBig_fera900c.jpg
[2] Copyright: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply
[3] Fera Photography: http://www.feraphotography.com/index.html
[4] This sharp cosmic portrait: http://www.feraphotography.com/AM14/Ngc896.html
[5] glowing gas and obscuring dust: http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/ism/what1.html
[6] Cassiopeia: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/constellations/cassiopeia.html
[7] H-alpha light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-alpha
[8] Double Star Cluster: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101014.html
[9] Heart Nebula: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090214.html
[10] complex of star forming regions: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nebulae/ic1805.html
[11] Milky Way Galaxy: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080606.html
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