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Astrophotographer captures jaw-dropping view of the Crescent Nebula
Astrophotographer Kevin Boardman spent more than 16 hours capturing the intricate filaments of the Crescent Nebula.
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Astrophotographer Kevin Boardman captured this spectacular view of the Crescent Nebula, revealing intricate filaments of gas surrounding a massive star nearing the end of its life some 4,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
Boardman's image represents a turbulent chapter in the life of the colossal Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163), which, visible as a blue point of light at the center of the image, is expected to end its life in a dramatic supernova explosion in about 100,000 years.
The 25-light-year-wide bubble is formed from stellar material cast off by WR 136 during its transformation into a red giant star, according to NASA. Repeated impacts by fast-moving stellar winds later send shockwaves through the outer shell, creating the complex filaments we see today.
Catalogued as NGC 6888, or Caldwell 27, the Crescent Nebula, gets its nickname from its crescent-moon like appearance when observed in certain wavelengths of light. Boardman revealed spectacular detail in the nebula by imaging it with a set of narrowband filters over 16 hours and 18 minutes spread across five nights in late July.
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"In the image, orange-red H-alpha reveals the tangled filaments while blue-cyan [O III] outlines emission from doubly ionized oxygen around the shell," Boardman told Space.com in an email. Each filter isolates specific wavelengths of light emitted by ionized gases, allowing different structures within the nebula to stand out.
Boardman collected roughly 12 hours of narrowband data from the nebula itself, along with four hours and 20 minutes of data capturing the surrounding stars, before combining exposures using the astronomy software PixInsight during post-processing.
The Crescent Nebula is too faint to be spotted with the naked eye, but can be seen with a moderate-to-large telescope equipped with a light pollution filter throughout September.