I imaged this huge emission nebula from my back garden on the west coast of Scotland. It is more commonly called The Crescent nebula or NGC 6888.
Total Integration time: 2 hours
Moon coverage: 1%
Location: Northern Hemisphere
Bortle: 4
The Crescent nebula or NGC 6888:
The Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792.
I swear I couldn't believe this was only two hours of exposure time, using my colour astronomy camera, the ZWO 533MCPro. I nearly fell off my little astro chair processing this image.
This emission nebula is known for its similarity to a brain. I can definitely see that for sure.
William Herschel had originally thought that the crescent nebula was a double star, but it is actually a Wolf-Rayet star, which are the hottest stars in the universe.
The Wolf-Rayet star at the heart of the Crescent Nebula is called WR 136. This star is 5.1 times larger than our Sun, nearly 10 times hotter, 21 times as massive and a huge 60,000 times brighter! Stars don't burn or are on fire. They fuse hydrogen to helium under immense gravitational force.
And it’s WR-136 that caused the nebula to form. Some nebulae are easy to image and this one was no exception. It is quite bright in the night sky so that makes it slightly easier to image.
It is thought that the Wolf-Rayet star at the centre of the Crescent Nebula - known as WR-136 will eventually end its life in a dramatic stellar explosion known as a supernova explosion.
I hope you enjoyed looking at my brain in space image.
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