March 4, 2015
The cosmos is full of spectacular things: ringed planets, exploding suns, rivers of stars across the night.
Pillars and Jets in the Pelican Nebula
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APOD published March 4, 2015. Credit: Larry Van Vleet (LVVASTRO). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
What dark structures arise from the Pelican Nebula? Visible as a bird-shaped nebula toward the constellation of a bird (Cygnus, the Swan), the Pelican Nebula is a place dotted with newly formed stars but fouled with dark dust. These smoke-sized dust grains formed in the cool atmospheres of young stars and were dispersed by stellar winds and explosions. Impressive Herbig-Haro jets are seen emitted by a star on the right that is helping to destroy the light year-long dust pillar that contains it. The featured image was scientifically-colored to emphasize light emitted by small amounts of ionized nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur in the nebula made predominantly of hydrogen and helium. The Pelican Nebula (IC 5067 and IC 5070) is about 2,000 light-years away and can be found with a small telescope to the northeast of the bright star Deneb.
Image credit: Larry Van Vleet (LVVASTRO)