Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2024 May 1
A colorful star forming region is shown that 
resembles a fish swimming to the right. Dark dust 
is apparent across the lower right, and a sparse 
starfield is visible all over the image. 
Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

IC 1795: The Fishhead Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Roberto Colombari & Mauro Narduzzi

Explanation: To some, this nebula looks like the head of a fish. However, this colorful cosmic portrait really features glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula's colors were created by adopting the Hubble color palette for mapping narrowband emissions from oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur atoms to blue, green and red colors, and further blending the data with images of the region recorded through broadband filters. Not far on the sky from the famous Double Star Cluster in Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula, as part of a complex of star forming regions that lie at the edge of a large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. At that distance, IC 1795 would span about 70 light-years across.

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