California is the land of the stars. It’s also in the stars as the California Nebula – a cloud of gas and dust that looks like the outline of the state. It’s more than a thousand light-years away, in Perseus.

The nebula belongs to a giant star-forming complex – the Perseus O-B-2 association. The region has given birth to many class O and B stars – the biggest and brightest of all stars.

The California Nebula probably is energized by one of those stars, known as Xi Persei. The star is more than 30 times the mass of the Sun, and tens of thousands of degrees hotter. At that temperature, it produces huge amounts of ultraviolet energy.

When that radiation zaps hydrogen atoms, it splits them apart. When they link back up, the atoms produce red light – the main color of the nebula. Oxygen and other elements produce their own colors, but they’re not nearly as common as hydrogen.

The California Nebula probably is about a hundred light-years long. It’s likely to split into smaller clumps that will collapse to form even more stars. But radiation and winds from Xi Persei and other big stars will blow away much of the nebula’s material – limiting the number of new stars for this cosmic California.

Perseus climbs into good view, in the northeast, in early evening. Xi Persei is visible to the naked eye, near the bottom of the constellation. But you need a telescope to see the faint outline of the California Nebula.

Script by Damond Benningfield