Head of the Pelican, IC 5067

Head of the Pelican, IC 5067 This image lies along a bright ridge of emission in IC 5067, also known as the Pelican Nebula. Appropriately, the Pelican Nebula itself, IC 5070, is part of a much larger, complex star-forming region about 2,000 light-years away in the high flying constellation Cygnus the Swan. The ridge spans about 10 light-years following the curve of the cosmic pelican’s head and neck. This false-color view also translates the pervasive glow of narrow emission lines from atoms in the nebula to a color palette made popular in Hubble Space Telescope images of star forming regions. Fantastic, dark shapes inhabiting the 1/2 degree wide field are clouds of cool gas and dust sculpted by the winds and ultraviolet radiation from hot, massive stars. The wind patterns are most visible in the left center of the image flowing around roundish red areas and flowing down to the twisted pillar. Cosmic dust clouds that span light-years seem to rise like mountains in the mist in this  view.  The orange color comes from a mix of Hydrogen gas emission in green and Sulfur gas emission in red and the blue color comes from Oxygen gas emission.  To capture the details seen in this image a total of 144 images were taken over 48 hours.