North America Nebula

We had blue, green and now red.

The North America Nebula is an enormous emission nebula. From our perspective on Earth, the nebula would look over three times as big as the full moon if it were bright enough to be seen with our naked eyes! That is about the angular size of ones thumbnail held out at arm's length. Its linear size is roughly 50 light-years in height and 40 light-years in width. Even more mind-boggling is its distance from us – about 1600 light-years!