Starship Asterisk*

The Light, the Dark, and the Dusty

Explanation: This colorful skyscape spans about three full moons (1.5 degrees) across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus. Near the edge of the region's massive molecular cloud some 2,400 light-years away, bright reddish emission region Sharpless (Sh) 155 lies at the upper left, also known as the Cave Nebula. About 10 light-years across the cosmic cave's bright rims of gas are ionized by ultraviolet light from hot young stars. Dusty blue reflection nebulae also abound on the interstellar canvas cut by dense obscuring clouds of dust. The long core of the Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1210 anchors the scene at lower right. Astronomical explorations have revealed other dramatic signs of star formation, including the bright red fleck of Herbig-Haro (HH) 168. Directly below the bright Cave Nebula, the Herbig-Haro object emission is generated by energetic jets from a newborn star.

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Great pic....AaaahhhhhhCHOOOOOOOOO.....so dusty.....

:---[===] *

Dusty indeed. Cepheus is a very dusty and nebula-filled constellation. There are many hot bright stars in it, but they look less bright and far less blue than they should, because of all the dust that is dimming and reddening them. Some of those hot bright but dust-reddened stars are Lambda Cephei, 26 Cephei, 19 Cephei, 9 Cepehi and HD 206267, the star ionizing of the Elephant's Trunk Nebula.

So sometimes I feel like saying,

Source: The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1997) wrote:

There was an old woman tossed up in a basket
Seventeen times as high as the moon.
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it
For in her arms she carried a broom.
'Old woman old woman old woman!' quoth I
Where are you going to up so high
'To brush the cobwebs off the sky.'
'May I come with you?'
'Aye, by and by.'

But of course, without those dusty cobwebs in the sky there would be far fewer bright blue stars in the sky, or none at all. So the Dusty King rules, after all, and seventeen times as high as the Moon is far from enough to brush his cobwebs away!

Ann

Those things may not be cobwebs... oh well...

Ann, I love the poem!

henrystar wrote:Ann, I love the poem!

Thanks! I like it too. It is one of the old Mother Goose nursery rhymes, I think.

Ann

I really like the contrasting colours, which are to be expected in regions that contain both emission and reflection nebulae. The blue reflection nebula is catalogued as vdB155.

thumbs up !