LightBuckets customer, Andy Macica, has once again been honored by having one of his images selected by the editors of Astronomy Magazine for publication. His latest image is of the nebula IC 2948, located in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Andy used the LightBuckets 14.5RC (LB-0004) to take LRGB exposures of 105, 20, 20, and 20 minutes respectively. The image also shows off Andy's considerable image processing skills reaching a very nice color balance, beautiful stars, and terrific signal to noise.

Most notable in the reddish emission nebula of glowing hydrogen gas are the silhouetted dark clouds, called Thackeray's Globules. These are condensed clouds of gases where new stars may be forming but they are also being eroded by the radiation of nearby stars. The nebula has a common name, The Running Chicken Nebula, see if you can tell why. IC 2948 is about 70,000 light-years across and is about 6,000 light-years from the Earth.

Congratulations to Andy for an incredible image and a terrific achievement!

* Click here to view the full resolution version of Andy's image of IC 2948.