Explanation: In brush strokes of interstellar dust and glowing gas, this beautiful skyscape is painted across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy near the northern end of the Great Rift and the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Composed over a decade with 400 hours of image data, the broad mosaic spans an impressive 28x18 degrees across the sky. Alpha star of Cygnus, bright, hot, supergiant Deneb lies at the left. Crowded with stars and luminous gas clouds Cygnus is also home to the dark, obscuring Northern Coal Sack Nebula and the star forming emission regions NGC 7000, the North America Nebula and IC 5070, the Pelican Nebula, just left and a little below Deneb. Many other nebulae and star clusters are identifiable throughout the cosmic scene. Of course, Deneb itself is also known to northern hemisphere skygazers for its place in two asterisms, marking a vertex of the Summer Triangle, the top of the Northern Cross.
Cygnus in RGB and H-Alpha. Photo: Skanker at
Astro Pixel Processor Community.
I'm usually no great fan of Hubble palette images, but today's APOD is impressive indeed. The entire Cygnus region seems to be engulfed in a storm of star formation and raging cosmic forces. I particularly appreciate the great annotation of the image. Thank you!
The picture at right shows the same area in RGB and H-Alpha. It's interesting to compare them.
Hα-enhanced wide angle images of the band of the Milky Way shows that Cygnus is particularly rich in emission nebulas. Bearing in mind that the Milky Way is a barred galaxy, and that barred galaxies typically display enhanced amounts of star formation at their bar ends, I have to wonder about the position of Cygnus in the Milky Way.
As you can see, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 does display enhanced amounts of star formation at its bar ends. I recommend this color-enhanced version of the Hubble picture of NGC 1300, which really brings out the star formation at the bar ends.
Is Cygnus near one end of the bar of the Milky Way? Are we seeing a lot of star formation in Cygnus because the end of the Milky Way bar is stirring the molecular clouds of Cygnus?
Ann wrote: ↑Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:54 am
Is Cygnus near one end of the bar of the Milky Way? Are we seeing a lot of star formation in Cygnus because the end of the Milky Way bar is stirring the molecular clouds of Cygnus?
Ann
Looking at the galaxy map of NGS, I'd say no; the North America nebula is in our neighbourhood.
Ann wrote: ↑Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:54 am
Is Cygnus near one end of the bar of the Milky Way? Are we seeing a lot of star formation in Cygnus because the end of the Milky Way bar is stirring the molecular clouds of Cygnus?
Ann
Looking at the galaxy map of NGS, I'd say no; the North America nebula is in our neighbourhood.
Really, pretty much everything we can see in the sky that is inside the Milky Way is in our neighborhood. It's pretty hard to see outside our neighborhood, especially in visible light.
Re: APOD: Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020 (2021 Feb 11)
Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2021 3:42 pm
by Phobos1
25.000 x 15.000 pixels. That's a LOT of pixels! Excellent work. Thanks for not psychedelicizing it with Hydrogen, Oxygen, Sulfur colorization and supersaturation.
As Ann says, the annotation is great.
Re: APOD: Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020 (2021 Feb 11)
Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2021 5:02 pm
by johnnydeep
This is indeed an impressive work of astrophotography, with without annotations I am completely lost. Where for instance is the pivotal Deneb? Somewhere "at the left" it says... Even the extensively annotated image linked to at nebulae and star clusters are identifiable doesn't identify particular stars (though a faint star map lurks in the background). Plus, most of the otherwise very nice inset callouts are maddeningly rotated so they don't match the image orientation.
Sorry, I really am still grateful for these images, just frustrated at times
Re: APOD: Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020 (2021 Feb 11)
Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:10 pm
by neufer
Re: APOD: Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020 (2021 Feb 11)
Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:31 pm
by De58te
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Thu Feb 11, 2021 5:02 pm
This is indeed an impressive work of astrophotography, with without annotations I am completely lost. Where for instance is the pivotal Deneb? Somewhere "at the left" it says... Even the extensively annotated image linked to at nebulae and star clusters are identifiable doesn't identify particular stars (though a faint star map lurks in the background). Plus, most of the otherwise very nice inset callouts are maddeningly rotated so they don't match the image orientation.
Sorry, I really am still grateful for these images, just frustrated at times
Since Deneb is supposed to be the tail of the swan, (Deneb is Arabic meaning tail), it is that star at the end of the line on the left. The swan's wings should be equal length, which the vertical lines are, and of course the neck of the swan is much longer than the tail. Hence Deneb on the left. Also Deneb happens to be nearby of the Pelican and North American Nebula's.
Re: APOD: Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020 (2021 Feb 11)
Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:55 pm
by neufer
De58te wrote: ↑Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:31 pm
Since Deneb is supposed to be the tail of the swan, (Deneb is Arabic meaning tail), it is that star at the end of the line on the left. The swan's wings should be equal length, which the vertical lines are, and of course the neck of the swan is much longer than the tail. Hence Deneb on the left. Also Deneb happens to be nearby of the Pelican and North American Nebula's.
<<In animal anatomy, a cloaca /kloh-AY-kə/ (plural cloacae /kloh-AY-see or kloh-AY-kee/ ) is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts (if present) of many vertebrate animals. All amphibians, reptiles, birds, and a few mammals (monotremes, tenrecs, golden moles, and marsupial moles) have this orifice, from which they excrete both urine and feces; this is in contrast to most placental mammals, which have two or three separate orifices for evacuation. The cloacal region is also often associated with a secretory organ, the cloacal gland, which has been implicated in the scent-marking behavior of some reptiles, marsupials, amphibians, and monotremes.
Birds reproduce using their cloaca; this occurs during a cloacal kiss in most birds. Birds that mate using this method touch their cloacae together, in some species for only a few seconds, sufficient time for sperm to be transferred from the male to the female. For some birds, such as ostriches, cassowaries, kiwi, geese, and some species of swans and ducks, the males do not use the cloaca for reproduction, but have a phallus. One study has looked into birds that use their cloaca for cooling. The cloaca in birds may also be referred to as the vent. Among falconers the word vent is also a verb meaning "to defecate".>>
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Thu Feb 11, 2021 5:02 pm
This is indeed an impressive work of astrophotography, with without annotations I am completely lost. Where for instance is the pivotal Deneb? Somewhere "at the left" it says... Even the extensively annotated image linked to at nebulae and star clusters are identifiable doesn't identify particular stars (though a faint star map lurks in the background). Plus, most of the otherwise very nice inset callouts are maddeningly rotated so they don't match the image orientation.
Sorry, I really am still grateful for these images, just frustrated at times
Since Deneb is supposed to be the tail of the swan, (Deneb is Arabic meaning tail), it is that star at the end of the line on the left. The swan's wings should be equal length, which the vertical lines are, and of course the neck of the swan is much longer than the tail. Hence Deneb on the left. Also Deneb happens to be nearby of the Pelican and North American Nebula's.
Thanks. Looks like I missed the forest for the trees. Of course, the big cross-shaped thing! I still don't recognize many constellations by sight beyond Orion, and the Big and Little Dippers. Here's a small map of Cygnus for the similarly constellation-impaired:
Cygnus
Re: APOD: Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020 (2021 Feb 11)
Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:03 am
by Fred the Cat
Like the invisible new moon tonight, has anyone put together an atlas of what all the constellations would look like if we could see them through the work of an astrophotographer's lens?
Fantastic image today but quite a project to compile. It would be great to see them all tucked together!
Cygnus Mosaic 2010 - 2020
It would be great to see them all tucked together!
