Striking Similarities
Arunabh Pratik
Award: Top 100
School: princeton international school of mathematics and science
Teacher: vasilios koures
Category: Natural
Photo #21506
Striking Similarities
Over the past two years of my astrophotography explorations, I have yearned to capture the perfect photograph of NGC 7000, also known as the North American Nebula. Due to the limited viewing windows, this nebula had eluded me. At over 11, 700 feet on a chilly night, I set up my telescope at Guanella Pass Summit in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Later, I successfully stacked 423 images captured over 70 minutes, finally revealing the nebula.
The entire gas cloud, 2, 590 light-years away and spanning 90 light-years, is difficult to capture in a single frame. The image displays the portion of the nebula that mimics Mexico. The emission nebula, a cloud of ionized gas, emits at a very specific 656 nanometers. The corresponding deep red color results from the recombination of electrons with hydrogen nuclei. The distinct shape of the North American Nebula results from the presence of a colder absorption nebula located between Earth and NGC 7000. The coastline is rendered by the edge of the dark dust cloud named LDN 935.
More profoundly, the stars in the nebula undergo a universal life cycle. When a massive star dies, the resulting collapse sends a shockwave that compresses nearby gas clouds. Consequently, these gas clouds contract to form a new generation of stars. Cyclically, these stars run an eternal relay race, not unlike us here on Earth.
Though these stars are unimaginably far from us, the North American Nebula reminds us that their attributes can be strikingly similar to ours.
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