The California Nebula
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Added 1663076548 by Heavenly Bodies Studio.
This is the California Nebula, Sh2-220, imaged over November and December 2020. It is a mosaic of 4 stacks of 26Mpixel images to capture the large area that this nebula covers - this image is about 5.5 degrees from end to end - that's equivalent to 11x the angle subtended by the moon. A total of over 45 hours of images were used for this.
The California Nebula is a large emission nebula - an area of mainly Hydrogen and Oxygen gases, ionised by UV light from nearby stars - in this case from the bright star called Xi Persei above the nebula. The nebula is about 1000 light years away in the constellation of Perseus and is about 100 light years long.
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