Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380)
- Type: Emission nebula and star cluster
- Distance: Approximately 7,200 light years from Earth
- Size: Roughly 100 light years in diameter
- Apparent size: 25 x 13 arc minutes
- Apparent magnitude: ~7.2 for the cluster (nebula is fainter)
- Age: About 5 million years
- Constellation: Cepheus
Located in the constellation Cepheus, the Wizard Nebula surrounds the young open star cluster NGC 7380. The cluster's forming stars, as well as their intense radiation and stellar winds, are responsible for sculpting the surrounding nebula into complex shapes, reminiscent of a medieval wizard.The nebula contains both bright emission regions, where gas is ionized by the young, hot stars, and dark nebulous regions where dense dust clouds obscure the light.
This area of the sky is littered with stars and I really struggled with processing this image. It always felt noisy, in spite of having 300x3min subs in HOS. I tried to tone them down a bit with an HDRMultiscaleTransform and MorphologicalTransformation in PixInsight and this was the result I settled on. I'll revisit it when I have more time and editing skill probably, but for now, here's my wizard.
Details accurate to the best of my knowledge from research done in 2022.
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