Meet NGC 3324 and IC2599 The Gabriela Mistral Nebula

This image was featured front cover of the RASC Journal (June 2020 edition) and Image of the Month in the BBC Sky at Night magazine (July 2020 edition).

Meet NGC 3324, an open cluster closely associated with emission nebula IC 2599 located in the southern constellation Carina. It’s at a distance of 7,560 ly from Earth.

This is another collaboration image between myself and Russ Jacob of Australia. Russ’ data was a pleasure to work. Very good quality and he did an excellent job of acquiring it.

This is image was taken using three different narrowband filters. Hydrogen-Alpha (Ha), Oxygen III (OIII) and Sulfur II (SII). This is also known as the Hubble Palette. The golden-orange is the Ha and SII emissions while the bule/teal is the OIII.

This nebulous region was named after Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, a Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet, who is more known by her pseudonym: Gabriela Mistral. 

I’ve created two images. One with the stars and the other image is without stars. I used the StarNet++ tool for Pixinsight to remove the stars. It leaves only the nebulousity and gives it an interesting look. I find the starless image a little more 3D, do you?