With the IIS server going down this post was lost... so here it is again
About 900 light years away, this faint molecular cloud lies in the constellation Eridanus but it is actually lit up by the brilliant giant blue white star Rigel, the brightest star in Orion and seventh brightest star in the sky. Faint red hydrogen emission also permeates the whole scene. The profile of a witch's face is clearly seen in the cloud, complete with straggly hair, big eye sockets, a hooked nose, open mouth and big chin
I went for a very natural colour look and tried really hard to maintain the gaseous appearance of the nebula and capture all the subtle colours of the region. To facilitate this, I used no deconvolution or gradient removal (it didn't need any as this passes through the darkest part of my sky), no star reduction and almost no noise reduction (just a tad on the faintest Ha puffs)
IC 2118 The Witch Head Nebula (click on image to enlarge )
To surf around finding galaxies and lots of puffs of gas in the 4deg X 4deg field, see the 19meg Full Resolution image
HERE
This is only the third light image for this
new rig and I have to say, I am really enjoying what it does
Enjoy
Mike