IC 2944, also known as the Lambda Centauri Nebula, is an emission nebula located in the southern constellation of Centaurus, approximately 6,500 light-years away from Earth. At its center lies a young open star cluster called Collinder 249, which is responsible for illuminating the surrounding nebula with its hot, massive stars. IC 2944 features Bok globules, which are frequently a site of active star formation. However, no evidence for star formation has been found in any of the globules in IC 2944 (Wikipedia).

IC 2944 spans about 100 light-years across and is characterized by intricate filaments of gas and dust, sculpted by the intense radiation and stellar winds from the cluster's massive stars. The region of nebulosity includes also IC 2948, as well as the fainter IC 2872 nearby.

On the bottom of the image one can also contemplate the presence of a PN, its name being HF 69, whereas on the right one can observe the presence of filaments from the SNR G296.1-00.5. On the left one can also observe the presence of the star cluster NGC 3766, which contains a relatively young population of stars, estimated to be around 14 million years old. Its stars are mainly hot and blue, typical of young stellar populations.

About the processing, this project was carried out thanks to a friendly collaboration between Aygen and me. Aygen took the excellent decision to recently install his scope in Chile, thus enabling to access the Southern Sky. For the Running Chicken, Aygen shooted no less than 80 hours of subs in LRGBSHO, thus generating layers of exquisite quality. Thanks to the massive signal accumulated on each layer, the processing has been significantly facilitated. About the processing itself, the idea was to generate a version emphasizing on the finest details of the nebula, as well as on the complexity of the gas composition.

Of note, the histograms are massively shifted on the red side, simply because hydrogen was not only predominant on the brightest regions, but also on the dimmest, where we couldn’t really notice any presence of oxygen or sulfur.

Below are reported the details of the subs:


As usual don’t hesitate to provide constructive feedback on the image

Nicola and Aygen