M78, Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula

I’ve been working on this image for awhile now. I’ve gathered images over two nights for about 6 hours of total integration. I was interrupted by two nights of clouds and last night I had to wait till almost 9 PM before the clouds went away, but then I got a good 3 hours on it. The nebulas are in the Orion B molecular cloud complex and about 1,350 light-years from Earth. It takes a lot of exposure to show the dust clouds around the nebulas. The large area of red is part of Barnard’s Loop, a huge emission nebula that encompasses nearly half of the Orion Constellation.

This is one of my favorite parts of the night sky to photograph. I have no idea how the name of Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula was arrived at but that is what is shown in Stellarium. Of course the official designation of M78 is most often used. Taken with Canon 500 f4 lens, Canon 7DMII H-alpha modified camera, Losmandy G11G mount, guiding with Lacerta M-Gen III and an Astronomics 60mm guide scope.

As always, one can right click on the image and open in a new tab to see a larger image.

Tonight, with luck, I will be shooting the Cosmic Bat. Stay tuned for that!