Chris Parfett’s artistic view of the Pelican Nebula wins our Photo of the Week for July 16, 2021.
The Pelican Nebula is an ionized hydrogen (H II) region near the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. A particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds, the nebula is often the subject of study, according to NASA. Energy from young stars is slowly transforming the cold gas to hot gas. The advancing boundary between the two, known as an ionization front, is visible in bright orange in the centre of the image.
Shooting from his front yard in Bittern Lake, Alberta, in June 2021, Parfett used a William Optics GT 102 telescope (f/6.9) and a ZWO 294MM + MC Pro camera to gather the data for the image. Total integration time was nine hours and 10 minutes.
“This image marks a first for me as a Hubble palette, three-filter image,” Parfett wrote. “It is the first time I have done this with my own gear. I shot this over three nights starting June 25 ending the 30, and did one filter per night at about three hours each.”
Sam Berrada’s sparkling shot of the globular cluster Messier 13 takes our honourable mention this week.
Also known as the Hercules Cluster, Messier 13 contains over 100,000 stars, tightly knit together by gravity. Located 25,000 light-years from Earth, it is estimated to be about 11.65 billion years old.
Berrada said he used a ZWO ASI2600MC camera along with a Takahashi TOA-130NFB telescope (f/5.3) to image the object. Shooting from the Laurentians in Quebec, Berrada captured the globular cluster in 20 300-second subs on July 3, 2021.
