Stellar Nurseries

Emission Nebula

Places like these exist all over our galaxy. Large clouds of hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, and dark dust reacting to forces which cause them to squeeze together until nuclear fusion begins. The birthplace of the stars, our sun was formed in a nebula such as this, the process will continue until all of the gas and material has been used up. Radiation from the young, hot stars release intense radiation causing the surrounding gas to emit light. To capture this light with a camera requires hours of exposure time and a tracking mount to follow the stars as they move across the sky due to the rotation of the Earth.

This is known as the Wizard Nebula, it can be found in the Cepheus constellation approximately 8500 light years away. I pointed my telescope at this nebula for 7 hours using a Celestron 9.25 XLT telescope and a ZWO astronomy camera.