Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula (Chris Hunt)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Eridanus (Eri) · Contains: 19 bet Ori · 69 lam Eri · IC 2118 · NGC 1720 · NGC 1726 · NGC 1752 · NGC 1779 · NGC 1797 · NGC 1799 · NGC 1909 · Rigel · The star Rigel (βOri) · The star λEri · Witch Head nebula · the Witch Head Nebula

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Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula

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Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula

The 7th brightest star in our night sky is Rigel, a blue supergiant star, which is the bottom left "foot' of the constellation Orion, a favorite in the winter sky. While you are gazing up at this bright and noticeably blue star (with a luminosity of about 200,000 times that of our sun and 18-24 times as massive) on a winter's evening, another creature of the night is gazing at it as well!

The Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118) is believed to be the remnant of an ancient supernova. Looking the profile of a witch's face gazing at Rigel and is about 900 light years from Earth. It is a reflection nebula which means the gas and dust are not ionized by Rigel as it is a little too far away, but instead the light is reflected from the star towards us. Blue star so blue reflection, right? Not so fast! The dust and gas in this nebula actually just preferentially reflects blue wavelengths making it look blue. Sound familiar? Essentially the same principle for why our sky appears blue as well.

Good witch or bad witch? You must decide. Several frustrating nights outside with temperatures from -5 to -15 temperatures (F) and trying to frame it well enough left me with own personal opinion and a little frost bite. Enjoy!

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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Star trails
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
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Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4213180
PixInsight job	4JPDBF2Y5IW9DK69SQJ1DB17NH2MYOV4
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	05h07m01s.13
RA (top/left)	04h56m39s.64
RA (top/right)	05h06m13s.39
RA (bottom/right)	05h17m22s.90
RA (bottom/left)	05h07m48s.51

Dec (center)	-08°09′42″.2
Dec (top/left)	-08°22′21″.1
Dec (top/right)	-10°43′35″.6
Dec (bottom/right)	-07°56′01″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	-05°35′34″.7

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Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula

Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula

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Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula

Something Wicked This Way Comes- IC 2118 Witch Head Nebula

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