The North America Nebula: NGC 7000 East | WIYN Telescope

The North America Nebula: NGC 7000 East | WIYN Telescope

NGC 7000, also known as the North America Nebula, is a giant emission nebula in the constellation of Cygnus at a distance of about 1,800 light years. This image shows the eastern part of the nebula, where beautiful dust lanes are visible. The dust is slowly being eroded and blown away by the light from stars embedded in the nebula. The reddish color is characteristic of hydrogen and it dominates. In 1890, the pioneering German astrophotographer, Max Wolf, noticed this nebula's characteristic shape on a long-exposure photograph, and dubbed it the North America Nebula.

This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9m-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. 

The image was generated with observations in Hydrogen alpha (red), Oxygen [OIII] (green) and Sulfur [SII] (blue) filters. In this image, North is left, East is down.

The Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOIRLab (WIYN) Observatory is situated atop Kitt Peak National Observatory, a partnership consisting of University of California Irvine, Purdue University, the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, and NASA.

Learn more about the WIYN Observatory:
https://www.wiyn.org/0.9m/index.html

Credit: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Release Date: June 30, 2020

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