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Harel Boren | all galleries >> Galleries >> Given Names to Astronomical Objects > B207 LBN777 The Baby Eagle Nebula / Vulture Head Nebula
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Nov. 4, 2010 Harel Boren

B207 LBN777 The Baby Eagle Nebula / Vulture Head Nebula

Negev Desert, Israel

SBIG ST8300C, Total 2:40 hours = RGB 32x5 min
Boren-Simon 2.8-8 ED OTA - http://www.powernewts.com - EQ6 mount, guided w/PHD and EQMOD
This image is 1100 pixels wide.

I haven't found too many images of this dusty area in the sky. While LBN 777 comprises the Eagle's body, the dark cloud just above its eye is Barnard 207.

I saw this object was a few times referred to as the "Vulture Head", but eventually I decided to go along with my kid's guess: each of the four had seen in it a baby bird, or eagle, or both... I was also venturing into uncharted waters with the the actual shape and colors of some of the dusty clouds in this image, so I do hope I have done them justice.

The Baby Eagle's name was warmly embraced by many astrophotographers.
I'll list some of the links here below, and ask forgiveness from all those lovely images that I have missed:

Iván Éder's: http://www.astroeder.com/lbn777_eder_en.html
Dan Crowson's: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/11916004294/sizes/l/
Diurnal's: http://www.astrobin.com/68156/0/
astrofotky.cz's: http://www.astro-forum.cz/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1381047892
Oleg Bryzgalov's: http://www.flickr.com/photos/olegbr/12519059773/in/pool-25191652@N00
Emil Ivanov's: http://www.emilivanov.com/CCD%20Images/LBN777_LRGB.htm

As for the object itself - In Jack McNeil's great site, I found some very interesting text about it (ref.: http://www.deepskyastro.com/Images_of_Nebulae/slides/lbn_777.htm) so here it is:
The strange coloration of the nebulosity has much to do with it's high galactic latitude relative to the disc of our galaxy, and the fact that there are no relatively bright young stars nearby to illuminate the interstellar dust via scattered blue light. The association of the bright red giant HD25596 near the bottom of the nebula, however, was suspected immediately after its discovery. A 1975 journal article by Martin Cohen established that the late type M4-class star is indeed moving into the nebulous body through a random encounter in space! The deeply colored dusty region near the lower left corner of the structure is the dark nebula B 107, which has many characteristics of a low-mass star-formation region. Several Herbig-Haro type objects have been discovered within the dense cloud...

The entire backdrop of this image is literally sprawling with extremely faint nebulosity which appears quite filamentary in nature. I highly suspect that these anonymous tendrils belong to an exotic class of nebula known as galactic-cirrus. Such nebulae are thought to be relatively warm, low-density strands of interstellar gas and dust typically found at high galactic altitudes.

Of an interesting side note is the presence of several distant spiral galaxies in the high-resolution color version, despite the existence of the tenous cirrus nebulosity.


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