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IC 1318

Cyg

• 30 x 300 sec - 2 hours 30m

IC 1318 is a large diffuse nebula complex visible in the constellation Cygnus; it is part of the Cygnus Molecular Cloud Complex, one of the largest and most massive nebulae in our Galaxy.
IC 1318 is located in the area of ​​sky surrounding the star γ Cygni, Sadr, the "heart" of Cygnus; it extends a few degrees northeast and southwest of this star, obscuring a particularly intense region of the Milky Way. It can be observed from the Northern Hemisphere for much of the year, and from mid-latitudes it is visible at the zenith. From the Southern Hemisphere, however, this stretch of sky is very difficult to observe, especially from mid-southern latitudes southward; however, it is fairly observable in the southern tropical zone.
The complex is made up of multiple nebulous areas, often interspersed with dark nebulae, more or less surrounding the star Sadr and more or less detached from each other, to the point that they have been classified as separate nebulae: they are in fact numbered from IC 1318a to IC 1318e, going from west to east. It is not, as it might seem, the star Sadr that makes the nebula bright, since it is not actually linked to the molecular complex: even though it is a very distant star, located around 1,500 light-years from us, it is decidedly in the foreground of the nebulous field. Star formation, a widespread phenomenon in this region of the Galaxy, is apparently slowing down only in a few small areas on the periphery of this substructure.

The most intense part directly observable is precisely the section of IC 1318 visible near the dark band LDN 889; The westernmost parts, however, appear thinner and more filamentary, suggesting that this part was actually formed by one or more supernova explosions. In the same area of ​​sky, a large number of objects can be observed, such as the Crescent Nebula and the Butterfly Nebula, as well as some open clusters, the most famous of which is M29. IC 1318 encompasses this and other nebulae, as well as the cluster NGC 6910.