Milky Way from Aquila to Cygnus:
A region full of supernova remnants
A 45°×62° view of the Milky Way in the constellations Aquila, Sagitta, Vulpecula and Cygnus is presented.
That part of the sky is full of emission nebulae. Many of them are known supernova remnants,
and the huge HII region in Cygnus also appears to have been formed by ancient supernovae.
Click on the image to load a high resolution (375 MP) version using a JavaScript viewer.
Pseudo-color composite where the color depends on Hα intensity (without continuum), as shown in the legend with units Rayleighs.
The Brightest stars are added in white to visualize the regions where Hα intensity is uncertain due to contamination by starlight.
(Unless pixels are saturated, adding white stars does not destruct the intensity information contained in the color, because the color map was chosen so that one color component (red, green, or blue) is always zero.
Thus, the color can be reconstructed by subtracting the value of the smallest component from the other two components.)
The 5°-large nebula on the left border becomes visible only after continuum subtraction, as it lies in a dense star field. The bright region next to it is ionized by the VUL OB1 association, located at a distance of about 2300 pc.
The nebula near the upper border is SH2-126, which is ionized by the LAC OB1 association, located 450 pc away.
The center of the image is dominated by a huge HII region in the constellation Cygnus. These structures appear to have been formed by ancient supernovae. An attempt to identify bubbles (some of the may no be be real) can be found in “Possible uncataloged bubbles”.
(In the JavaScript viewer, these objects can be plotted by enabling the ‘SIMG’ catalog in the menu (‘F2’ key). Visualization ban be improved by toggling the objects on and off using the ‘3’ key.)
In the past, it was suspected that many nebulae in this region are part of a single superstructure, the “Cygnus Superbubble”. However Uyanıker et al. (2001) determined that these objects are located at too much different distances.
This work also provides a good overview of the nebulae in this area.
Image data
This image was calculated using data from the Northern Sky Narrowband Survey, DR0.1. Click the link for detailed information or visit the instruments page for information about the equipment. Here is some additional image-specific information:
| Center position: | RA: 22:34h, DEC: 37.5° |
|---|---|
| FOV: | 62°×45° (RA×DEC, through center) |
| Orientation: | JavaScript viewer: North is up Above: North is right |
| Scale: | 10 arcsec/pixel (in center at full resolution) |
| Projection type: | Stereographic |
References
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