VdB 141 - The Ghosts of Cepheus

Astrobin Top Pick

Resembling a scene from a horror movie, we see ghost like structures of cold molecular gas floating through the outer regions of our milky way. In the central region you might even spot clouds looking like people fleeing of the big, foul white looking ghost. These nebulae are not glowing by themselves, they are blocking starlight or reflecting it. Active star formation can also take place, in the righthand part of the nebula you might see a conical jet of glowing molecular gas ejected from the dark nebula due to the strong winds of a young stellar object in the globule CB 230.

Some of the faintest dustlike structures aren't even illuminated by a single star in their vicinity, they reflect the diffuse light from the milky way into our telescope. Hence they are extremely difficult to photograph with even low levels of light pollution, a dark location, fast telescope, long integration time and careful processing is required. Lukas Eiserts home observatory features the best properties for this demanding observation.

Photographed from Hohenlohe, Germany under Bortle 4 conditions.