charles

影像提供與版權: Russell Croman   

Explanation:
      This amazing skyscape lies along a bright ridge of emission in IC 5067, also known as The Pelican Nebula. Appropriately, the Pelican Nebula itself is part of a much larger, complex star-forming region about 2,000 light-years away in the high flying constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Cosmic dust clouds that span light-years seem to rise like mountains in the mist in this natural color view, recorded through broadband filters to produce an analogy to human color vision. The fantastic shapes are sculpted by winds and radiation from a hot, massive stars and the dominant red emission is due to atomic hydrogen gas. Placing your cursor on the image will bring up a false color image of the nebula made through narrowband filters that also map specific emission from sulfur and oxygen atoms. The mapped color image reveals even more details of the cosmic clouds and their composition.  

說明:
      這塊令人驚豔的天區位於IC 5067中發亮的區域，又被稱為鵜鶘星雲。正確地說，鵜鶘星雲本身是一個大型且複雜的恆星形成區之一部份，它位於天鵝座內，距離地球約2,000光年遠。在這幅利用寬頻濾鏡拍攝，合成出類似人類真實色彩視覺的影像中，大小約數光年的宇宙塵埃雲看起來就像是隆起的山丘。由高溫且大質量恆星的輻射與恆星風雕塑出這驚人的外形，它所呈現紅色的色彩主要是由氫原子氣體產生的。

資料來源: Scientific American
               Department of Physics, NCKU