Sharpless SH2-54

Sharpless SH2-54 Sharpless Sh2-54 is located next to the Eagle Nebula Messier 16 and the Swan Nebula Messier 17, approximately 7,000 light-years away within the constellation of Serpens.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. The energetic light from these stellar newborns has caused ambient gas to emit light of its own, which takes on the pinkish hue characteristic of areas rich in hydrogen. Two of these objects  were discovered in a similar way — astronomers first spotted bright star clusters in both Sharpless 2-54 and the Eagle Nebula, later identifying the vast, comparatively faint gas clouds swaddling the clusters.In the case of Sharpless 2-54, British astronomer William Herschel initially noticed its beaming star cluster in 1784. This image was taken by the 6 ” Takahashi FS152 with a focal reducer using atomic filters in the Hydrogen red palette. In this case bright stars in the area are exciting Hydrogen, Sulfur, and Oxygen gas and they are re-emitting light at their characteristic wavelenghts. In this image red is coming from Hydrogen emission, green from Sulfur emission, and blue from Oxygen emission. The yellow, orange, and purple colors are mixes of these colors. The shapes in the image looks like two colorful ostriches standing next to each other.  The image has 130 sub images taken over 65 hours.