Witch Head Nebula

The Witch Head Nebula is a faint reflection nebula illuminated by the the blue supergiant star, Rigel (β Orionis) seen blazing in the right of the image. Rigel is the 7^th brightest star in the sky and marks the position of Orion the hunter's left foot. At a mere 7 million years old it has exhausted the hydrogen in its core causing it to expand and cool. Rigel is 200,000 times more luminous than the Sun, around 20 times as massive and over 70 times its diameter.

The Witch Head Nebula lies at a distance of around 900 light years from Earth in the constellation of Eridanus the river and is believed to be a supernova remnant. Its wind-blown appearance and comet-like protrusions probably arise from interactions with the stellar wind from the stars of the Orion OB1 association. Most of bright stars that form the constellation we see as Orion belong to the association. The reddish glow in the top right corner is the Hα emission from gas in Barnard's Loop. In fact the Witch Head Nebula can just be made out to the right of Rigel in that image.

Although extremely faint the nebula could be captured under Eustis' exceptionally dark skies. The image is a stack of 50×5 minute subframes for a total exposure of 4^h10^m from Eustis Ridge through a 135mm telephoto lens attached to a cooled one-shot color astronomical camera. Most of the exposures were made on January 24^th, 2025 with the temperature hovering around 0°F. The image is 6.8°×10.3° and south is up.