NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula (starlord)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Aquila (Aql) · Contains: NGC 6781

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NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

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NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

I decided to image this nebula mainly because of its interesting name! It is rather faint and looks like a ghostly apparition of the moon floating among the stars. The outer ring is more defined than the center, reminiscent of the Ring Nebula. If you look at the full resolution image, you can see a faint web-like structure in the inner part of the nebula.

The colorful bubble we see is about two light years across. It comprises of the shells of gas blown off from the faint, but very hot, central star’s surface. The shells of gas expand out into space and shine under the intense ultraviolet radiation from the progenitor star.

The LRGB image was enhanced with narrowband data:

Luminance – Enhanced with Ha data

Red – Enhanced with Ha data

Green – Enhanced with OIII data

Blue – Enhanced with OIII data

This was one of my first attempts at combining narrowband and broadband data. The main challenge I faced was not overdoing the enhancement, striking a balance between accurately representing the data and artistic license.

I aimed to tweak the image just enough to make the nebula’s structures clearer/visible. For example, I found that the faint nebulousity extending beyond the ring in the upper right quadrant was all but invisible in the LRGB image. It popped out when enhanced with the Ha data. In fact, it was so surprising that I went back to check whether I had made a mistake in processing!

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience working on the image to tease out this ghostly nebula from the starry background!

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2894302
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

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NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

NGC 6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

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