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The Seagull Nebula, IC2177
From the Atacama desert with a small telescope.

© Stéphane Guisard, Los Cielos de América

& Thierry Demange, CapNature

The Seagull Nebula, IC2177, is a region of nebulosity that lies along the border between the constellations Monoceros and Canis Major. It is a roughly circular HII region centered on the Be star HD 53367.This nebula was discovered by Welsh amateur astronomer Isaac Roberts and was described by him as, "pretty bright, extremely large, irregularly round, very diffuse."

The name Seagull Nebula is sometimes applied by amateur astronomers to this emission region, although it more properly includes the neighboring regions of star clusters, dust clouds and reflection nebulae. This latter region includes the open clusters NGC 2335 and NGC 2343.

The picture shown here was taken from the Atacama desert in Chile with a small (106mm diameter) refractor telescope (Takahashi FSQ106) with focal reducer and a SBIG ST11000 CCD camera mounted on an Takahashi NJP160 equatorial mount. Total exposure time is 11h40 minutes through Halpha, Red, Green and Blue filters. Image acquisition and pre-processing by Stéphane, color processing by Thierry.

Seagull Nebula, full field in Halpha, R, V, B.

Seagull Nebula, full resolution image crop of the "Seagull head".

Seagull Nebula, full resolution image crop of one of the "Seagull wing".

Seagull Nebula, full field in Halpha, 5h10min exposure.