Ryan Jenner
Good morning. It’s October 27, and today’s image takes us 2,000 light-years from Earth. That’s quite far away, but it’s still in our little corner of the Milky Way, which stretches about 105,000 light-years end to end.
In this image, courtesy of Ryan Génier, the large, reddish object covering much of the painting is the Flying Bat Nebula. It’s basically a huge cloud of hydrogen gas. The Squid Nebula appears blue, indicating doubly ionized oxygen – which is when you ionize your oxygen once and then ionize it again just to be sure. (In all seriousness, this probably indicates a low-mass star nearing the end of its life.)
The Squid Nebula is a recent discovery, first discovered by French astrophotographer Nicolas Otters in 2011. Ginnier did a great job of detailing it in this image, taken from the backyard of his home in Kitchener, Ontario. “It took about 50 hours of total data but I trimmed it down to the best 37 hours before collecting and processing,” he told me. “My backyard is somewhat light-polluted (Burtle 7), which made it more difficult to capture.”
The result definitely seems worth the effort. Wishing everyone a happy weekend.
source: Ryan Jenner
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