NGC 7000 Detail in Hubble

The North America nebula (NGC 7000) is the name of a diffuse gas cloud in the constellation Swan. The nebula got its name because of its shape, which is reminiscent of a map of the North American continent. The gas cloud is located between 2,000 and 3,000 light years and consists predominantly of hydrogen, which occurs partially in ionized form (HII) and emits visible light in the form of deep red radiation. The nebula appears intensely reddish in long-exposed photographs. The North American was discovered in 1891 by Max Wolf. The discovery was one of the first with the help of astrophotography.

This false color image was captured in the gas spectrum of the ionized hydrogen (H-alpha), oxygen ([O III]) and sulfur ([S II]). An RGB image was created from the three channels. The red channel was assigned equally [S II], the green channel H-alpha and the blue channel [OIII]. In sum, this results in a very interesting color play, which reflects the structures very contrastively.

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