North American & Pelican Nebula (Negative) (David McClain)

North American & Pelican Nebula (Negative)

This image tries to emphasize that the old familiar nebulae are really artifacts of a giant blob of glowing H-II covered over by a large sprawling dark cloud. So while the pillars in the glowing regions are attractive features, the continent of North America, and the Pelican shape are artifacts of the true nebula. You have to allow your mind to visualize the dark clouds as the actual nebula with interesting shapes as well...

Just for kicks, I tried taking the integrated stacks and color calibrating the negative images, then stretching. But unfortunately, those dark regions have very low SNR and hence little detail in them. All you get is a broad ruddy region with very black shadows where the glowing H-II and stars show through. Nothing much to see, really.

And, or course, this begs the question... in regions away from the glowing H-II, how do you discern the boundary of the dark cloud? Where does the dark cloud end, and star densities are just low?

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Perhaps the revision helps a bit...

Original
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B

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