IC 1871 & SFO 12 • Inside the Soul Nebula in SHO

While I have captured the Soul Nebula in it’s entirety, along with a couple Sharpless objects just outside of it before, I have always wanted to get in close to IC 1871; my favorite part of the Soul Nebula.

This image shows a few groups of bright rimmed globules that are collectively catalogued as IC 1871 on the right and SFO 12 on the left. Their gaseous forms are sculpted by the UV radiation and stellar winds from many hot young stars in the star cluster associated with the Soul Nebula. The term “bright rimmed” arises from the side of the globules that are facing the ionzing source exhibiting bright rims as a result of the gas and dust becoming more compressed and denser and therefore brighter than the surrounding material.

SFO stands for “Sugitani, Fukui and Ogura”, the surnames of three Japanese astronomers who compiled the SFO catalogue of bright rimmed globules in HII regions. It was published in 1991 (northern hemisphere) and 1994 (southern hemisphere) by Koji Sugitani, Yasuo Fukui and Katsuo Ogura and has 89 in total.