The Pelican Nebula, IC5070, is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus some 1800 ly away. Dense pillars and filaments of gas are visible, including the stellar nursery Herbig–Haro regions, the most prominent of which are HH 555 and HH 564. The HH regions are directly associated with newborn stars and are formed when jets of gas are ejected along the rotational axis of the new star's porto-planetary disk. The visible features are these polar jets colliding with the surrounding clouds of gas and dust. Therefore, seeing the orientation of these clouds, specifically HH 555, shows the new star system's orbital orientation. These features typically last only a few thousand years and have been shown to visibly change on timescales as short as a year.
Additional location info on the HH regions can be found here:
Pelican Nebula HH Regions
Comments