Starship Asterisk*

Thanks, J.S. I hadn't realized that was available through the photographer's name.

Very nice image... "Come into my parlor...."

Probably better than my "Squiggly Line Nebula"....

:---[===] *

[quote="NCTom"]... Tracking through the links I could find no further details.[/quote]
Click on the photographer's name under the title and it takes you to his site, and then ultimately to today's APOD, with photo details...

[url]http://www.astrophotographybyjoemorris.net/Spider_and_Fly_Nebula.htm[/url]

Click the image there for a higher-resolution version.

Nice shot revealing some interesting features: the "smoke trail" extending out from the right side of the spider, the two bright yellow-orange stars in the spider's upper left, and what has the appearance of a shock wave moving into the Fly Nebula. Regrettably I couldn't get the enlargement to be any larger than the original photo. Tracking through the links I could find no further details.

[url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180129.html][img]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_180129.jpg[/img] [size=150]The Spider and The Fly[/size][/url]

[b] Explanation: [/b] Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer ([url=http://hawastsoc.org/deepsky/aur/index.html]Auriga[/url]). The [url=http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/10524/]spider[/url]-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled [url=https://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im1166.html]IC 417[/url], while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_1931]NGC 1931[/url] and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula. About 10,000 [url=https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/how_long_is_a_light_year.htm]light-years[/url] distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact [url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151201.html]NGC 1931[/url] (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.

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