Fish Head Nebula, IC 1795

The Fish Head Nebula, IC 1795   consists of glowing gas and obscuring clouds  in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula’s remarkable details are shown in the Hubble palette with Hydrogen gas in green, Sulfur gas in red, and Oxygen gas in blue.  Ionized by ultraviolet light from energetic young stars, the hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen atoms emit  characteristic light as its electrons are recaptured and transition to lower energy states. Not far on the sky from the famous double cluster in Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula, as part of a complex of star forming regions that lie at the edge of a large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. At that distance, this picture would span about 70 light-years across IC 1795.