Gabriela Mistral Nebula
Known as the “Gabriela Mistral Nebula”, it is a combination of the open cluster NGC 3324 and the emission nebula IC 2599, located in the Carina constellation. The object is northwest from the Carina Nebula shown in a previous post and is associated with the Carina Nebula. The name refers to Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean Nobel Prize winner for literature.
It is described as a “cosmic cloud” sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from the hot young stars in the NGC 3324 cluster. It is located about 7,500 light-years from Earth and is about 35 light-years across.
The image above was processed from a data set captured by Nik Szymanek using the Planewave CDK24 telescope operated by the Telescope.live web site in the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. The images were filtered for hydrogen alpha, sulphur 3, and oxygen 2 emissions and processed using Pixinsight and Photoshop.
As a contrast, the image below was processed from a data set captured through with the Plane Wave CDK 17 Dall-Kirkham telescope operated by Slooh.com. It is located at the observatory of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Lad Dehesa, Chile.
This image was captured using luminance, red, green, and blue filters and processed with Pixinsight and Photoshop. This filtration usually results in more realistic colors. For example, the hydrogen gas around this object is rendered red, which is the color we would see if we viewed the object directly in a large telescope that gathered enough light for our eyes to respond.
Light, Shadow, Form, and Texture 