This is a 4 panel mosaic of IC2628.
The full size image is here.
Red: [SII] 13 hrs. Green: H-alpha 12 hrs. Blue: [OIII] 13 hrs.
The bottom right is the Prawn nebula. Toward the top left is a quantum superposition of Alvin the Chipmunk, with his two mammalian eyes and cheeky smile, and Jar Jar Binks, with his more reptilian eyes. Joining Alvin and the Prawn is a dark diagonal, reminiscent of the neck of a cobra, or perhaps a dinner shirt ruffle.
Also between Alvin and the Prawn, but above the dark dust lane, is a very beautiful cometary globule of the same general persuasion as the Elephant's Trunk or one of the Pillars of Creation. We will call this one "ET", because of the shape of the head of the trunk. ET seems to have a sharp thorn poking out of his chin, toward bottom right. We've processed the image chiefly with the clarity and naturalness of this thorn in mind.
This area is intriguing in that it is one of the few places where SII is much stronger than OIII. We have rescaled the three channels to have equal average brightness.
In light of gentle advice and encouragement from Strong Mike, this image has not been deconvolved. We have used a very gentle 24% increase in local contrast using wavelet sharpening.
Stars have been whitened and magenta rings subdued, but in order to maintain fidelity, not entirely eliminated.
Aspen CG16M on 20" PlaneWave on MI-760 fork. Acquisition and processing using our own Selene and GoodLook 64.
Other very fine recent versions of almost exactly this field have been taken by
Slawomir and Colin.
For comparison, here is a
6 MB mosaic of just Alvin/JarJar and ET taken by the ESO La Silla 2.2 metre scope.