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Photographer:

Rod Pommier

Location of Photo:

Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA

Date/Time of photo:

2014-07-09 through 2015-06-24

Equipment:

Celestron Compustar C14 with Astro-Physics 0.75x focal reducer (f/8). SBIG STL 11002 CCD camera with Baader Planetarium HaLRGB filters. SBIG AO-L adaptive optics at 4.5 Hz. Exposures: HaLRGB=220:80:90:90:90 minutes=9 hours 30 minutes total exposure.

Description:

This region of the back of the "neck" of the Pelican Nebula (IC 5067) exhibits direct evidence of the birth pains of several new stars. Stars begin forming as spinning accretion disks that collect by gravitational attraction within a nebula. Dynamic processes within the spinning disk cause particles to flow outward from opposite sides of the center of the disk. This process, called bipolar outflow, is highly collimated into jets and fans. When visible in nebulae, they are known as Herbig-Haro objects. Two delicate tendrils eminating from the tip of the long elephant trunk, known as Herbig-Haro 555, are the highly collimated bipolar outflow arising from the accretion disk of a protostar forming within the trunk's tip. They are bowed back along the trunk by the same fierce stellar winds that have carved the trunk. Three other Herbig-Haro objects are visible as fans and jets just off the edge of the molecular cloud at the lower left of the image. They are, from left to right, Herbig-Hao 563, 564, and 565.

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