Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming (Scott Denning)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Minor (UMi) · Contains: 1 UMi) · 23 UMi) · Alrucaba · Cinosura · Mismar (α UMi · NGC 188 · Part of the constellation Ursa Minor (UMi) · The star 2 UMi · The star 24 UMi · The star Polaris · The star Yildun · The star λ UMi · Tramontana · Vildiur (δ UMi · Yilduz

Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming, Scott Denning

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Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming

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Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming

Samyang 135 + ASI2600 mc pro on RST-135e mount from offgrid cabin at 3200 m elevation (Bottle 1-2)
148 x 120s OSC exposures (unguided)

The dust in this image is sometimes called “Galactic Cirrus” or the “Integrated Flux Nebula.” It’s not illuminated by Polaris or by any particular star. It’s illuminated by the combined light of all the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy!

Polaris lies about 433 light years away, in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The dust in the image is much further out, way up toward the “top” of our Galaxy. Below it is the immense disk of stars, like a cosmic frisbee 100,000 light years across. It’s their light that we see reflected in Galactic Cirrus.

The dust in this image is triply-significant: it’s cobbled together from the remains of dead stars; it’s also the protective radiation shroud into which gas can collect to form new stars; finally, it’s the reaction vessel to cook the molecular ingredients for future plants, planets, and people. Refractory crystals of ur-minerals condense from incandescent interstellar plasma. They shade their neighborhood from intense UV and radiate heat in the IR, cooling into freezers onto which oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen collect as ice. Then over billions of years the ices react into cryogenic crud – organic sludge that contains amino acids, nucleobases, sugars, and many other prebiotic compounds.

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	8437958
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Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming

Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming

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Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming

Galactic Cirrus (IFN) Beyond Polaris, from Treeline in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming

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