"About 550 light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia lies IC 63, a stunning and slightly eerie nebula. Also known as the ghost of Cassiopeia, IC 63 is being shaped by radiation from a nearby unpredictably variable star, Gamma Cassiopeiae
The remarkable Gamma Cassiopeiae is a blue-white subgiant variable star that is surrounded by a gaseous disc. This star is 19 times more massive and 65 000 times brighter than our Sun. It also rotates at the incredible speed of 1.6 million kilometres per hour — more than 200 times faster than our parent star...
The radiation of Gamma Cassiopeiae is so powerful that it even affects IC 63, sometimes nicknamed the Ghost Nebula, that lies several light years away from the star...
 The hydrogen within IC 63 is being bombarded with ultraviolet radiation from Gamma Cassiopeiae, causing its electrons to gain energy which they later release as hydrogen-alpha radiation...
This hydrogen-alpha radiation makes IC 63 an emission nebula, but we also see blue light in this image. This is light from Gamma Cassiopeiae that has been reflected by dust particles in the nebula, meaning that IC 63 is also a reflection nebula". https://esahubble.org/news/heic1818/
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The data for this project was acquired by Maurizio in Oct and Nov 2021.

Ever since we saw an image of this unusual nebula it caught our attention.

Here a normal stack was made in AHD in DSS and also a normal stack and extraction of Ha and [OIII] in Siril.

The area around the nebula has a subtle haze that is slightly more pronounced towards the vicinity of the star Gamma Cassiopeia.

Despite the 10 hours of signal collected, certain edges and details of this special nebula were achieved and others were not. I liked the effects that both stacks resulted in and ended up being combined in the final image.

With the extractions of Ha and [OIII], the green synthetic channel was made with 50% of both. The signal collected from [OIII], despite being very weak, is present in the entire area. The channels were combined giving it a slight SHO palette coloration although instead of blue a grayish coloration was obtained instead, this managed to define more the shadows and the contrasts in the nebulous area.

It was worked starless to be able to apply micro-contrasts with curves in certain areas.

The tip of the halos was used to cancel them during the subtraction in the starless image left by StarNet V2 produced by the largest stars in the area except that of Gamma Cassiopeia, where the ring expanded much more than the rest but in a blurred way, and for that reason it was not 'suppressed', as it is certainly an intrinsic feature of this variable star.

This peculiar nebula that behaves as emission and reflection at the same time is really fascinating and give some 'aura' of myst...

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Processed July 2022