The Wizard Nebula, also known as Sh2-142 is an emission nebula of mostly hydrogen found approximately 8500 light-years^[1] in the direction of the constellation Cepheus. It’s commonly assigned the name NGC 7380, however that name more accurately given to the cluster of stars which have been born from the gas. Of this cluster, two stars in close orbit around each other – collectively named DH Cephei – are responsible for the surrounding nebula’s red glow.^[2] The radiation coming from these exceptionally bright young stars kicks some electrons into unstable higher-energy orbits around their nucleus, before they quickly fall back to a lower more stable orbit and eject a photon with a wavelength that making up the difference in energy between the two. (This is the same process that makes fluorescent paint glow under a black light!)

Captured over two nights, the 17th and the 20th, using a Fujifilm X-A5 and a GSO 6" F/4 Newtonian mounted on a Celestron AVX, with a GSO Coma Corrector and guided by a ZWO ASI120MM Mini and an Svbony SV165. The first night was 143x90s exposures at 1250 ISO, calibrated with 60 flats, 40 darks, and 60 bias frames. The second night was 126x90s exposures at 1250 ISO, also calibrated with 60 flats, 40 darks, and 60 bias frames. The two nights were stacked together with Siril, which was also used for background extraction and photometric color calibration. Wavelet decomposition and other final touches were done in GIMP. I definitely did some kind of star reduction on this picture, but I don’t think I was using Starnet++ at this time, so I’m honestly not sure how I did it.