Intense light streams from Rigel (bright star at right) across 40 light years of space to illuminate the Witch Head Nebula, then reflects another 775 light years to reach us. This nebula is very dim and is just barely above sky glow at a clear dark site. South is up in this image.

Rigel is B8 supergiant star with an absolute visual magnitude 40,000 times that of our Sun. Its surface temperature is 11,000 K.

For advanced technical information on the anti-vignetting performed on this image, see this article.

• Object: Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118) in Eridanus/Orion
• Exposures: 2 @ 45 minutes
• Telescope: Astro-Physics 105mm f6
• Mount: Losmandy GM-8 @ 0.5x
• Guiding: SBIG ST-4 @ 600mm (A2)
• Camera: Pentax 67
• Film: hypered Kodak PPF 400
• Location: Tierra del Sol, CA
• Date: 27-Dec-00 21:02 PST
• Conditions: seeing 6/10, transparency 7/10, LVM 5.5, 45° F
• Processing: UMAX PowerLook 3000, Auriga Imaging RegiStar 1.0.2, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, SGBNR 1.0.9.58