NGC 7380 The Wizard Nebula and Dark Nebula
“Cloak and Wizard”
LRGB was captured from my imaging site in the Siskyou volcanic wilderness under dark Bortle 2 skies. This is a few hours of LRGB with 12 minute subexposures with 3 hours (also 12 min subs) of Hydrogen-Alpha added from Frazier Park, California. The luminance has more stars and shows more white-light features, especially that dark nebula that seems to interact in some way with the bright NGC 7380 Wizard Nebula. So I really made an effort to blend the low-contrast but very rich luminance against the high contrast and darker H-Alpha. Because the Wizard is in such a dense star field and compared to some emission nebulas it does not have a ton of contrast, it’s rarely photographed in white light only. This is an attempt to preserve a natural white-light look and color while still benefitting from the extra contrast for the Wizard Nebula.
The dark nebula (towards upper right) is a rather low contrast feature but unique for this composition. It has a trailing, tadpole-like dark lane extending from the dark nebula, with a star in the foreground having no effect or reflection scatter – otherwise it ought to have made the nebula appear blue.