Happy New Years, Pelicans!

The Pelican Nebula. Taken under Michigan skies throughout September, 2022.

The Pelican Nebula is an emission nebula which has features resembling a long-billed waterbird known as the pelican. If the bird's bill doesn't first pop out to you, look for the pelican's neck and the rest should reveal itself. However, beyond the neck, head and bill, I don't see anything more resembling the bird. The next image is rotated and framed to most easily see the pelican (spoiler alert):

The Pelican's Profile in the Pelican Nebula

So is there really a pelican shaped cloud of light-emitting gas in space? No, not really. When we take a closer look at the structure, we begin to notice that the gradients that once gave the appearance of the opened-bill of a pelican are actually a stream of opaque dust in the foreground. The same is true for what ends up shaping the top of the pelican's head. In contrast, when we look at the back of the pelican's neck (right side in the above mage), we can see this is actually layers of pillowy gasses. This is one noteable feature not created entirely by foreground dust.

A closer look at the Pelican's head.

To me, these light-blocking clouds of dust are just as amazing to look at, even though what we are really looking at is the absence of light. Their structures are still really cool, but we don't have much of a way to see any detailed gradients since their appearance manifests simply by impeding the light behind it. Although they block visible light, longer wavelengths of light (ie. infrared) are still visible, but you need an infrared telescope outside of the Earth's atmosphere to really catch these photons. The JWST, for example, observes primarily in different parts of the infrared spectrum.

Dark dust clouds in the foreground.

This image is a combination of 17 hours using a Hydrogen Alpha filter and 12 hours using an Oxygen-III filter: a total of 29 hours collecting photons. In reality, I recorded about 40 hours of photons but had to essentially throw out 11 hours due to passing clouds and bad-focus. I'm still learning how to obtain reliably sharp focus throughout a night of constant temperature/humidity changes.

Hope you enjoy this image as much as I do!

Full resolution available on Flickr here.

Hydrogen-alpha only image here.

Happy New Years!