Perseus Molecular Cloud, 2015 (digital photo)

Creator: Pavel Pech This image shows a large amount of deep sky objects at the edge of Aries and Perseus constellation. Probably the most famous is NGC1333 a reflection nebula (shining in the blue colour) located in the top right part of the image. It is surrounded by B205 a Barnard dark nebula and Herbig-Haro objects. Even small-scale emission nebulae (red colour) can be seen in that area. There are also other reflection nebulae like e.g. vdB12, vdB13 and vdB16 shining in blue and yellow colours. What mostly dominates this image are dark nebulae. This image is a composition of LRGB data where Luminance channel has big impact on the contrast and visibility of objects while the high quality RGB data, taken under very dark sky with minimum of light pollution, assure a colourful image edge to edge. It was taken during six different nights and the total integration time was 12 hours as only the best, high quality data were used in the image processing. Born digital photograph entitled 'Perseus Molecular Cloud' by Pavel Pech in Šumava National Park, Czech Republic on 7th December 2015. Taken with ASA 10-inch Newtonian telescope, Gemini 53F mount, Morvarian Instruments G3-11000 CCD camera, f/3.6 reducer, 120 x 6-minutes exposures. Runner up in Stars & Nebulae category of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016.