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A share of the Pelican Nebula captured shining with stars from the constellation Cygnus. (Record credit: Jason Livingston)
NASA network engineer and astrophotographer Jason Livingston has captured a inspiring stare of the Pelican Nebula shining 2,000 mild-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Remarkably, he photographed the scene from his mild-polluted yard in Henderson, Nevada, correct 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the Las Vegas Strip.
Livingston’s cosmic vista unearths a striking share of the Pelican Nebula — named for its visible similarity to the distinctive waterbird — in glowing detail, as it shines from behind a depressing veil of molecular cloud.
Radiation from young stars is actively reshaping the nebula, which serves as a stellar nursery the put future generations of stars will gain. The nebula itself is a ways too faint to inspect with the bare observe, though the two brightest blue-white stars captured in Livingston’s image — 57 Cygni and 56 Cygni — might maybe maybe very correctly be spotted from a depressing sky assert, shining shut to Deneb, Cygnus’ brightest famous individual.
“By day, I am a network engineer with NASA but by night my telescopes are usually working,” Livingston told Space.com in an email. “I’ve been into astronomy since high school but only [in] the past few years [I] was able to take up the hobby again and produce images.”
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Livingston captured the nebula over the path of several nights in August 2025 using his Apertura CarbonStar 150 refractor telescope paired with a ZWO astronomy camera and a suite of supporting equipment.
He fracture up his observing time across several narrowband filters, every designed to isolate particular wavelengths of sunshine. These wavelengths are then assigned — or mapped — to seen mild colors during the postprocessing stage. “I use narrowband imaging to reduce the effect of light pollution,” Livingston explained. “While it gives some images a false color, the results can be striking. So, yes, light pollution does affect my imaging, but I work with what I have.”
It took Livingston a colossal full of 27 hours to image the Pelican Nebula as it hung in the carefully mild-polluted skies shut to the Las Vegas Strip. The finish consequence is a magnificently detailed nebula vista that showcases the advanced, twisting magnificence of the famous individual-forming topic threaded in the path of our galaxy.
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Editor’s Point to: When you would favor to share your astrophotography with Space.com’s readers, then please ship your photo(s), comments, and your title and assert to spacephotos@space.com.
Anthony Wood joined Space.com in April 2025 after contributing articles to outlets including IGN, Unique Atlas and Gizmodo. He has a ardour for the evening sky, science, Hideo Kojima, and human space exploration, and can’t wait for the day when astronauts once again dwelling foot on the moon.
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