Swan Nebula & Environs, Messier 17 and IC 4706,

Messier 17 and IC 4706 are located next to the Eagle Nebula Messier 16 and SH2-54, approximately 5500 light-years away within the constellation of Sagittarius.This region of the Milky Way Galaxy houses an enormous cloud of star-making material. The three nebulae are where regions of this cloud have clumped together and collapsed to form new stars.   At the distance of 5500 light years, this 90 arc minute wide field of view(about three moon diameters) spans over 90 light-years. Stellar winds and energetic light from hot, massive stars formed from M17’s stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material producing the cavernous appearance and undulating shapes. Messier 17  is located in the lower half of this image and IC 4706 is located just above. While known as the Swan nebula M17 looks more like a fish rising up to bite some food and IC 4706 looks like a colorful Swan. The energetic light from the newborn stars has caused ambient gas to emit light of its own, and in this false color image in the Hubble palette the green color is coming from Hydrogen gas emission. The blue color comes from Oxygen emission and the red color from Sulfur emission.  This image is a composite of two images. The overall image was taken with the Takahashi FS152 refractor at a focal ratio of f6 and is a combination of 54 images taken over 18 hours. The image of M17 was taken with the Planewave 20″ CDK20 telescope over 18 hours as well.