Location / Date

Zellerndorf, Nov 2018 - Feb 2019

Telescope / Mount / Guiding

ASA 10" Astrograph, ASA 3" Wynne-Corrector (focal length 910mm)
ASA DDM60, no Guiding

Camera / Exposure

Moravian G3-16200, Astrodon filters

2-panel mosaic:

Lum     2 x (72 x 10min)
R         2 x (18 x 5min bin2x2)
G        2 x (18 x 5min bin2x2)
B        2 x (18 x 5min bin2x2)

Total exposure time: 33h

Processing

PixInsight, Fitswork, Photoshop

Notes

This colorful and dusty region in the constellation Taurus is part of the Taurus molecular cloud.

The bright blue reflection nebula in the middle is Cederblad 30, also known as LBN 782, is categorized as bright nebula because within its structure there is an area of luminous nebulosity reflecting light from bright stars nearby. Additionally, there are Barnard dark nebulae, such as Barnard 7, which is the dark nebula around the bright blue LBN 782. This dusty structures are estimated to be about 400 light years away from earth.

Stars are forming in this cosmic scene. Some young T-Tauri class stars are embedded in the remnants of their natal clouds. Millions of years old and still going through stellar adolescence, the stars are variable in brightness and in the late phases of their gravitational collapse. Their core temperatures will rise to sustain nuclear fusion as they grow into stable, low mass, main sequence stars, a stage of stellar evolution achieved by our middle-aged Sun about 4.5 billion years ago.

Further to the left of LBN 782 is the white and yellowish reflection nebula VdB 27 (Cederblad 31, LBN 785). It is illuminated by the radiation of the young variable star RY Tauri. RY Tau belongs to the T Tauri stars and is therefore a very young star in the formation phase. It has not yet reached the main sequence in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and still shows irregular brightness fluctuations, probably due to the accretion of matter from the surrounding molecular cloud. However, with the help of radiation pressure and stellar wind, it has managed to blow a hole into the molecular cloud so that we can see the star in visible light. The dust surrounding RY Tau reflects the light of the star. There is a bright fan-shaped reflection nebula and a much fainter one to the left of RY Tau.

Another interesting object is the very distant IC 359, the white spiral structure just in the lower right corner, which is a distant spiral galaxy some 183 million light years away from Earth.