The Pelican Nebula lies in Cygnus, beside the brighter North America Nebula (NGC 7000). Streams of glowing hydrogen trace a long neck and a curved beak, and dark dust completes the bird-like outline. The nebula is catalogued as IC 5070; the bright arc of the head and neck is IC 5067. It and NGC 7000 are two sides of one enormous cloud of ionized gas, Sharpless 2-117. A foreground dust lane, LDN 935, hides the middle of that cloud, so the halves look like separate nebulae.
Young, hot stars are still reshaping the gas. Their radiation drives an ionization front outward through cold filaments, and the Herbig–Haro object HH 555 sends twin jets into the surrounding cloud. Much of the ultraviolet light for the whole complex comes from the Bajamar Star, an O-type star concealed behind LDN 935.
These frames show that pelican-shaped shore of the cloud: a finished portrait of the nebula, and the same field as a star recomposition, with the stars set back onto the processed gas and dust.
Facts
- Emission nebula in Cygnus, catalogued as IC 5070 and IC 5067
- About 2,590 light-years away (795 parsecs), the same distance as NGC 7000
- About 45 by 38 light-years across, covering 60′ × 50′ on the sky
- Part of Sharpless 2-117, divided from the North America Nebula by the dust lane LDN 935
- Position (J2000): RA 20h 50m 48s, Dec +44° 21′
- Apparent magnitude about 8, near the bright star Deneb
