This is a picture of the Eagle Nebula, a magnificent emission nebula. At the heart of the Eagle Nebula are the Pillars of Creation, famously photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, and recently by the James Webb Space Telescope. In this image, photographer and CIERA graduate student Imran Sultan depicts the Eagle Nebula in approximately its true colors (see here for Sultan’s alternate version of the Eagle Nebula colored using the HOO color palette).
This image is a combination of narrowband (H-alpha and O-iii) and full-color data. Sultan shot the narrowband photos from the bright skies of the Chicago suburbs using a light filter; the full-color photos were shot from dark rural skies in central Illinois. Sultan, who practices astrophotography in his free time, is a graduate student in CIERA Professor Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere’s group. In 2023, Sultan’s photo of the Western Veil Nebula and the Flower Moon won first place and runner-up respectively in the astronomy category of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition.
Credit: Imran Sultan/Northwestern/CIERA
- Science