Pelican Nebula Ionization Front

Noirlab_noao-04745_1024

noirlab_noao-04745 October 6th, 2003

Credit: John Bally (U. Colorado), Bo Reipurth (U. Hawaii)/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

These images were obtained with the MOSAIC CCD camera at the prime focus of the Mayall 4-meter reflector, and show a 36 arc minute field of view that contains the well known Pelican nebula, located at the northwest rim of the giant HII region W80 (the North America/Pelican Nebula) in Cygnus. These narrow-band images, obtained in the red light of recombining hydrogen atoms and singly ionized sulfur, reveal a population of hitherto unrecognized shocks which trace outflows from forming stars embedded within the molecular clouds that rim the nebula. The visibility of these protostellar outflows is enhanced by the ultraviolet radiation field of several massive stars located off the image. This radiation is eroding the surrounding molecular cloud. In regions shadowed by dense clumps of gas and dust, parts of the dense and cold molecular cloud survive to produce the long pillars of dusty material. A faint jet (known as Herbig-Haro object 555) squirts out of the tip of one of the pillars, apparently indicating the presence of an unseen protostar. North is up and west is to the right in this image. This image was produced by NOAO Survey Program "Deep Imaging Survey of Nearby Star-Forming Clouds", and is the subject of a related press release. Note: the large “donut” in the middle is an artifact of the coma corrector in the KPNO 4-meter that was not completely removed in the reduction. This is the full size image complete with ragged edges revealing the dither pattern of the different fields. A clipped version at lower resolution is also available.

Provider: NOIRLab

Image Source: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noao-04745/

Curator: NSF's NOIRLab, Tucson, AZ, USA

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Pelican Nebula
Noirlab_noao-04745_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 20h 49m 36.9s
DEC = 44° 3’ 52.1”
Orientation
North is 0.2° CCW
Field of View
37.5 x 38.2 arcminutes
Constellation
Cygnus
Noirlab_noao-04745_1280
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ID
noao-04745
Subject Category
Subject Name
Pelican Nebula
Credits
John Bally (U. Colorado), Bo Reipurth (U. Hawaii)/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Release Date
2003-10-06T00:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noao-04745/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Instrument
Color Assignment
Band
Bandpass
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
312.4039086, 44.06446529
Reference Dimension
8697.0, 8858.0
Reference Pixel
5758.327759, 804.2607422
Scale
-7.19e-05, 7.18e-05
Rotation
0.1734284828
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
NSF's NOIRLab
URL
https://noirlab.edu
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
950 North Cherry Ave.
City
Tucson
State/Province
AZ
Postal Code
85719
Country
USA
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
NSF's NOIRLab
Publisher ID
noirlab
Resource ID
noao-04745
Metadata Date
2022-09-12T14:58:04.096559
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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