Ecliptic Voyage

The Pelican Nebula: Taken under Michigan skies in July, 2021. With six hours of data on the Pelican Nebula I figured I would have enough to pull out a vibrant and sharp-featured photo to show. However, it turns out since we have wildfire smoke dumping over Michigan skies this past month, pollutants are scattering the faint light of deep sky targets while amplifying light pollution. The nebulous region where the Pelican nebula resides in is a large swath of sky full of Hydrogen gasses (H-II) which emit in a narrow band of red wavelength light. It turns out the particles making up this smoke pollution end up scattering the red wavelengths much worse than others. Hopefully you can still make out the pelican shape in this object.

The Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888): Photo taken under Michigan skies on July 7th, 2021 At about 5,000 light-years away, the Crescent Nebula ( NGC 6888 ) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus (Greek for Swan). It was discovered by the German astronomer William Herschel in 1792. This beautiful brain-like marvel is apparently the result of interacting stellar winds from different stages of life of Wolf-Rayet star WR-136. In the star's past life (before becoming a Wolf-Rayet), it had undergone a transition into a Red Super-Giant some hundreds of thousands of years ago. As a Red Super-Giant, it slowly puffed out a layer of gas that settled around the star. This star eventually underwent another transition, turning from a Red Super-Giant to a Wolf-Rayet with 'fierce stellar-winds'. The interaction between the stellar winds and the earlier (and sl