Sh2-115 Wide View

 SH2-115   Sharpless 115 stands just north and west of Deneb, the bright star at the top of the Northern Cross, aka Cygnus the Swan. Noted in the 1959 catalog done by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as Sh2-115, the faint but lovely emission nebula lies along the edge of one of the outer Milky Way’s giant molecular clouds, about 7,500 light-years away. Shining with the light of ionized ions of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen in this Hubble palette color composite image, the nebular glow is powered by hot stars in star cluster Berkeley 90 in the center right of the image. The green color comes from Hydrogen emission, the red color comes from Sulfur and the blue color from Oxygen.  The cluster stars are likely only 100  years old or so and are still embedded in Sharpless 115. But the stars’ strong winds and radiation have cleared away much of their dusty cloud. At the emission nebula’s estimated distance, this cosmic clouds spans just under 100 light-years. The image was taken through a 6″ Takahashi FS152 telescope and a Finger Lake Instruments PL16803 camera which has a square 38mm CCD chip. The center portion of the image was taken by a 20″ Planewave CDK20 also with a PL16803.  To make this image there  were a total of 120, 20 minute subimages taken over a period of 40 hours with the FS152, and 65 images over 28 hours from the CDK20.