The Wizard Nebula
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
Open star cluster NGC
7380 is still embedded in its natal cloud of interstellar gas and dust
popularly known as the Wizard Nebula. Seen with foreground and background
stars along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy it
lies some 8,000 light-years distant, toward the constellation Cepheus.
A full moon would easily
fit inside this telescopic view of the 4 million year young cluster and associated nebula,
normally much too faint to be seen by eye.
Made with telescope and
camera firmly planted on Earth, the image reveals multi light-year sized shapes
and structures within the Wizard in a color palette made popular in Hubble Space Telescope images.
Recorded with narrowband
filters, the visible wavelength light from the nebula's hydrogen, oxygen, and
sulfur atoms is transformed into green, blue, and red colors in the final
digital composite.
But there is still a trick up the Wizard's sleeve. Sliding your
cursor over the image (or following this link) will make the stars
disappear, leaving only the cosmic gas and dust of the Wizard Nebula.
Image Credit & Copyright: Michael
Miller