The Cygnus Wall

Picture a cliff of glowing gas, fifteen to twenty light-years long, carved by the light of very young stars. Its outline traces what looks like the coast of Mexico and Central America, and that is what earned it its nickname: the Cygnus Wall.

This wall is only a fragment of a far larger cloud, the North America Nebula (NGC 7000), whose silhouette evokes the whole continent. It lies some 2,600 light-years from us, according to the most recent measurement by the Gaia satellite.

If we look closely at this section, it is because it holds the most intense star formation in the entire nebula. The gas here is so dense that new stars keep igniting; their radiation makes the surrounding hydrogen glow and slowly eats away at the edge of the cloud, raising the bright front that the photograph captures in close-up.