M78 Casper the Ghost Nebula
Messier 78 or
M78, also known as
NGC 2068, is a
reflection nebula in the
constellationOrion. It was discovered by
Pierre Méchain in 1780 and included by
Charles Messier in his catalog of
comet-like objects that same year.M78 is the brightest diffuse reflection nebula of a group of nebulae that includes
NGC 2064,
NGC 2067 and
NGC 2071.
his group belongs to the
Orion B molecular cloud complex and is about 1,350
light-years distant from Earth.=10.5px M78 is easily found in small
telescopes as a hazy patch and involves two stars of 10th and 11th
magnitude. These two
B-type stars,
HD 38563 A and
HD 38563 B, are responsible for making the cloud of dust in M78 visible by reflecting their light.The M78 cloud contains a cluster of stars that is visible in the
infrared.
Due to gravity, the molecular gas in the nebula has fragmented into a hierarchy of clumps, whose cores have masses ranging from 0.3
M☉ to 5
M☉. About 45
variable stars of the
T Tauri type, young stars still in the process of formation, are members as well. Similarly, 17
Herbig–Haro objects are known in M78.
This can be a challenging subject to capture due to the large dark molecular cloud structures surrounding the central bright stars. My first attempt a year ago was very unsatisfactory, so I abandoned it. This is my second attempt on this subject and I'm much happier with the result. It is a relatively small object in the FoV of my Esprit 100ED/ASI2600MC. I think this target would be a very good one for an LRGB stack from a monochrome imager in an OTA with a FL of 1000mm or even longer.
Most images published for this object are with longer FL OTA's, and typically don't show the edge of Barnard's Loop that is immediately adjacent to the left in this image.
Since M78 is a reflection nebula, image detail tends to be lost when using narrow band filters. In this image I stacked exposures from Optolong's L-Enhance and L-Pro filters. The L-Enhance frames showed a noticeable loss of detail in the dark structures and nebula cloud in/around the reflection nebula as compared to the L-Pro frames.
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