                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2024 May 1
   A colorful star forming region is shown that resembles a fish swimming
      to the right. Dark dust is apparent across the lower right, and a
       sparse starfield is visible all over the image. Please see the
                 explanation for more detailed information.

                        IC 1795: The Fishhead Nebula
        Image Credit & Copyright: Roberto Colombari & Mauro Narduzzi

   Explanation: To some, this nebula looks like the head of a fish.
   However, this colorful cosmic portrait really features glowing gas and
   obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern
   constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula's colors were created by adopting
   the Hubble color palette for mapping narrowband emissions from oxygen,
   hydrogen, and sulfur atoms to blue, green and red colors, and further
   blending the data with images of the region recorded through broadband
   filters. Not far on the sky from the famous Double Star Cluster in
   Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula,
   as part of a complex of star forming regions that lie at the edge of a
   large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the
   larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our
   Milky Way Galaxy. At that distance, IC 1795 would span about 70
   light-years across.

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