Viewing Rosette, Running Man nebulas
The winter skies are colorful. In winter we do have some great sunsets, but otherwise it might seem counterintuitive to say the winter skies are colorful because many times in winter, one can’t see the sky at all. Near Siloam Springs and Bentonville, cloudy and rainy weather can hang on for days.
So … when I say “the winter skies are colorful” what could I mean?
When there are clear skies at night in winter, one can have some of the clearest, most transparent skies of the year. That is when color can shine in winter.
We can see a certain part of the Milky Way in winter that is loaded with colorful clouds of various gases and innumerable stars, hundreds to thousands of light years from Earth. Because of several physical mechanisms, these clouds and stars together can glow bright colors if one has the correct equipment to photograph them.
I have included an image of the Rosette Nebula, glowing very red, and the Running Man Nebula, glowing an intense blue, both photographed in my backyard, just outside Siloam Springs.
In the case of the Rosette Nebula, hydrogen gas is stimulated by the stars in the center of the Nebula. Ultraviolet photons coming from the stars excite the hydrogen atoms and they fluoresce. I took the image of the Rosette with my backyard equipment and a digital camera in a long exposure.
With the Running Man Nebula, some bright stars are imbedded in a very large cloud of interstellar dust. Interstellar dust absorbs yellow and red wavelengths but lets blue wavelengths pass through. So, the dust acts as a sort of “wavelength strainer,” passing only the shorter wavelengths of the visual spectrum — what our eyes see as blue.
While with the Rosette Nebula, it is fairly easy to see that this nebula looks rose-like, seeing the Running Man is more of a challenge. Can you see the head, upraised arms, torso and legs of the Running Man? It does take some imagination and close examination of the image but many people can see him.
These two images, and many others I have made, make winter skies show up as colorful. So, when the dreary skies of winter hang on, remember that there will be some nights in winter when amateurs are gathering particles of light in their telescopes and cameras, collecting color in a season that otherwise can look rather drab.
Keep on the lookout for those nights in winter that are clear and sharp. Somewhere, there is an amateur astronomer harvesting the colors of the winter night sky.