The Crescent nebula is one of the classic summer targets. It’s one that I always find myself revisiting whenever I have a new piece of gear or when I want to see how much better my processing has gotten.

The Crescent nebula has always reminded me of a brain more than anything. It makes me think of Mother Brain from Metroid or like the second phase of the Andross fight in Star Fox. There are a lot of fun sections throughout this image, but other than the main Crescent nebula in the center, I want to highlight the tiny bubble nebula in the lower left quadrant of the image.

This is an HOO representation of the nebula, meaning that hydrogen is assigned to the red and oxygen is assigned to green and blue which creates a red/teal contrast. The stars are, however slightly different. The stars were a combination of SHO data, or the Hubble palette.