Casper, The Friendly Ghost Nebula

Casper The Friendly Ghost Nebula (NGC 2068, M78) is a reflection nebula located about 1350 light years from Willingboro and is about 3 light years in diameter. It is the brightest diffuse reflection nebula in a group of nebulae that includes NGC 2064, NGC 2067, and NGC 2071 (also shown).

Casper is a stellar nursery of young, hot stars. However, these stars are not energetic enough to ionize the interstellar gases for the nebula to be classified as an emission nebula. So, it is classified as a reflection nebula and the color reflects the color of the illumination stars.

Due to the limitation imposed by the houses and trees in my neighborhood, I was forced to limit the exposure time for Casper to 2 hours. Thus, a lot of the dust clouds surrounding the nebula is not visible and I had to photograph it while it was still rather low in the sky (hence the glow you see beneath it’

But my main problem at first, was that I could not understand why this nebula was named “Casper, The Friendly Ghost.”

But then I noticed the eyes!