M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: M 78 · NGC 2064 · NGC 2067 · NGC 2068 · NGC 2071

M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula, Joe Niemeyer

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M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

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M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

To complete the trifecta of favorite nebulae in the Orion constellation, here is my image of the Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula, also known as M78. You can see Casper's eyes peering out at you through the nebula. And to the left is his nebula buddy cataloged as NGC 2071. The nebulae are located between Alnitak and Betelgeuse in Orion. These types of nebulae are called reflection nebula and are quite different from the glowing red emission nebula such as the Orion Nebula and Flame Nebula. Reflection nebulae are illuminated solely by the stars within the dust cloud and thus take on an eerie blue tint. Casper's eyes are actually two B-Type stars whose brilliant light illuminates the nebula.

This image proved challenging due to the extremely dim nature of reflection nebulae. M78's magnitude (brightness) is 8.3, whereas the limiting magnitude with the naked eye is 6.5 on a reverse logarithmic scale. I shot 32 frames at 60-seconds, ISO 12800, and a tight 2350mm FL, then stacked and calibrated with 20 flat frames, 10 dark frames, and 10 bias frames, and finally post-processed in Photoshop.

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	4491014
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

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M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

M78 Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

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