The Pelican Nebula is part of the much larger North America Nebula. It is an interesting place--a bright, HII emission nebula peppered with evolving stars and gas clouds. Young stars are slowly heating the cold gas of the Pelican, causing a vast ionization front to move outwards in the cloud, with dense filaments of cold gas punctuating the cloud.
Below is an annotated version of the image:
Some of the dark pillars (especially the pillar at the 2 o'clock position), contain Herbig-Haro objects, which are clouds of nebulosity caused by narrow gas jets shooting from new-born stars Herbig-Haro objects are short-term phenomena, lasting at most a few thousand years as the gas jets move away from the star into the surrounding nebula or interstellar space.
This image was captured in hydrogen alpha light. It is a stack or approximately 20 x 30 second integrations. Imager: Mallincam DSm; telescope Orion ST-80; mount iOptron ZEQ25.
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