Imaged nights of: 5/25/2021, 5/28/2021, 6/12/2021, 6/13/2021, 7/28/2021, 7/29/2021, 7/30/2021, 7/31/2021
No Dithering / Unguided
Sharpless 2-64 (also known as W40 or Westerhout 40) is an emission nebula in Serpens about 1000 light years distant and central Ha dominant portion of this image.
I have call it the Smoking Embers Nebula because it is so like a smoking fire with bright red coals, and lots of smoke going off in the direction of the wind, which in this case is to the lower left. Only a small amount of Ha has been added to the RGB image to add a little intensity to the bright coals.
I found this a rather challenging target because there is such a contrast between the bright star rich fields in the top left and bottom central regions, and very dark central areas dominated by dark nebula. It requires some creative stretching to bring out the details.
It is part of the Serpens Cloud Complex, and as the image suggests, it is a complex region containing many catalogued Lynd Dark Nebula (LDN), SH2-64, and several unidentified emission nebula.
Wikipedia:
Westerhout 40 or W40 (also designated Sharpless 64, Sh2-64, or RCW 174) is a star-forming region in the Milky Way located in the constellation Serpens. In this region, interstellar gas forming a diffuse nebula surrounds a cluster of several hundred new-born stars. The distance to W40 is 436 ± 9 pc (1420 ± 30 light years), making it one of the closest sites of formation of high-mass O-type and B-type stars. The ionizing radiation from the massive OB stars has created an H II region, which has an hour-glass morphology.
Dust from the molecular cloud in which W40 formed obscures the nebula, rendering W40 difficult to observe at visible wavelengths of light. Thus, X-ray, infrared, and radio observations have been used to see through the molecular cloud to study the star-formation processes going on within.
W40 appears near to several other star-forming regions in the sky, including an infrared dark cloud designated Serpens South and a young stellar cluster designated the Serpens Main Cluster. Similar distances measured for these three star-forming regions suggests that they are near to each other and part of the same larger-scale collection of clouds known as the Serpens Molecular Cloud.
My Collections:
Abell Planetary Nebulae (Complete)Planetary NebulaeGalaxiesSharpless 2 Objects
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