Did you know that Niagara Falls has more varieties of gulls, 27, than anywhere else on Earth?
This is a Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) portrait of the Seagull Nebula. The ‘wings’ of this nebula span 100 light years across.
Seagull Nebula in SHO
PROJECT NAME
Seagull Nebula
EQUIPMENT
Borg 107FL f/3.9
ASI 1600 MM Pro
Avalon M-Uno
DATE
12.02.2024
14.02.2024
24.01.2025
INTEGRATION
SII – 1 h 19 m
Ha – 1 h 39 m
OIII – 49 m
Total – 3 h 47 m
This stunning, turbulent cloud of dust is full of sulphur (SII), hydrogen (Ha), and oxygen (OIII) gases. I’ve processed the image using the “Hubble Palette,” where sulphur is shown in red, hydrogen in green, and oxygen in blue—a style you might recognize from those iconic Hubble Space Telescope photos.
If you look closely at the bright blue oxygen signal, there’s a curved shape just below a star. That’s the bow shock of a runaway star, FN Canis Majoris, carving its way through the surrounding dust and gas.
This target is tricky to capture from my place—it’s only visible for a short window thanks to my tree line and the endlessly cloudy winter skies. I’ll revisit it next year and add in some natural colour (RGB) stars to round it out.
FN Canis Majoris, a binary star, in the Seagull Nebula