I took this photo from my driveway in November (2023).
The red in the photo is ionized Hydrogen gas. The stars are the same color as what you would see if you looked up at the night sky.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (launched in 2003) photographed this nebula and discovered 3x young stars (beneath the dust cloud at the base of the "volcano") that are thousands of times brighter than our Sun. I wondered why I couldn't see these stars in my own photo, especially if they are so bright. But then I learned more about the Spitzer telescope. When Spitzer was launched (and when it first photographed SH2-140), its camera and instruments were cooled with liquid helium to minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. The Spitzer is more accurate than telescopes on Earth with a 33 *foot* diameter. The Spitzer *telescope* also orbits the Sun (just like the planets in our Solar System). CRAZY!!!
SH2-140 is about 2,900 light years away and is in the constellation Cepheus.
There are 2x bright stars above the "volcano" (one above the other). One of these stars, "HD211880," is ionizing the nearby Hydrogen gas, which ultimately gives us the red color.
The bright orange star toward the top right of the photo is "25 Cephei." This star is 25 times the size of our Sun and can be seen with the naked eye in areas with low light pollution. I will post a diagram in the comments of how to find this star in the night sky.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (launched in 2003) photographed this nebula and discovered 3x young stars (beneath the dust cloud at the base of the "volcano") that are thousands of times brighter than our Sun. I wondered why I couldn't see these stars in my own photo, especially if they are so bright. But then I learned more about the Spitzer telescope. When Spitzer was launched (and when it first photographed SH2-140), its camera and instruments were cooled with liquid helium to minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. The Spitzer is more accurate than telescopes on Earth with a 33 *foot* diameter. The Spitzer *telescope* also orbits the Sun (just like the planets in our Solar System). CRAZY!!!
SH2-140 is about 2,900 light years away and is in the constellation Cepheus.
There are 2x bright stars above the "volcano" (one above the other). One of these stars, "HD211880," is ionizing the nearby Hydrogen gas, which ultimately gives us the red color.
The bright orange star toward the top right of the photo is "25 Cephei." This star is 25 times the size of our Sun and can be seen with the naked eye in areas with low light pollution. I will post a diagram in the comments of how to find this star in the night sky.
