The Ghost of Cassiopeia

This ghastly, haunting nebula leaves very little room for misinterpretation, and yet lots of room for imagination. The Ghost of Cassiopeia is energized by the nearby bright star seen in this image, named Gamma Cassiopeiae. This star is a whopping 20x the mass of our sun, shining 65,000x more brightly as a result. This luminosity is a byproduct of the intense heat and radiation emanating from Gamma Cassiopeiae, creating solar winds that help shape and form the nearby Ghost. The star and nebula are about 550 light years away from Earth, and are a few light years apart from each other. I took this image on Halloween night and the night following in 2021 in my backyard, using filters to capture the sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen and assigned those to red, green, and blue respectively.

Please note this image is heavily compressed for the website. You can view the full resolution JPEG file here: https://www.astrobin.com/iobry5/