Posted by: Jason Dain
Think of it like the clouds over a city, lit aglow by all the lights below.
As Astrophotographers in the northern hemisphere, we often start our night by aligning our mounts to the North Celestial Pole near Polaris. This is the point in the sky that the stars appear to rotate around
as the night goes on. I say “appear” as it is the earth that is rotating around its axis and not the stars. This image is of Polaris, the nearby NCP, a small star cluster (NGC188) and the area of Integrated Flux Nebula in the region.Integrated flux nebulas are a relatively recently identified astronomical phenomenon. In contrast to the typical and well known gaseous nebulas within the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, IFNs lie beyond the main body of the galaxy.
The term was coined by… More