Again I went to the darkest place in the sky, visible from Earth - to the Great Rift of the Milky Way near the Serpent. Photographing anything there reminds me of the familiar topic of photographing a black poodle in a coal cellar
This time I focused on the nebula named Smoking Embers by Jerry Macon, designated Westerhout 40, Sh2-64 and RCW 174. It is one of the closest places to Earth for the formation of massive O and B class stars. Light is extinguished greatly due to the dense dusty medium, so we can barely see the nebula at visible wavelengths. However, it is fully visible in infrared.
Westerhout 40 (Sharpless 64) is the centerpiece of this image. It is obscured by the dust of the Milky Way's Great Rift. Much of the image shows the Rift dust (the Milky Way's star field is only visible on the left side of the image). Sharpless 64's emission is energized by stars in the star-forming region of W 40 (not very clearly visible due to the obscuring Rift dust).
Westerhout 40 is located near several other star forming regions in the sky, including a dark infrared cloud labeled Serpens South and a young star cluster labeled the Serpens Cluster. The similar distances measured for these three star forming regions suggest that they are close together and part of the same cloud known as the Serpent Molecular Cloud.
The dust obscuring the stars and the nebula has a direct effect on their color and brightness. The area is hellishly difficult to process - as evidenced by the bizarre photos about FOV similar to mine, which I found on the net.
Comments