ABSTRACT
The nebula is part of the larger IC1396 nebula in Cepheus and its fanciful name describes the sinuous gas and dust feature, glowing as a result of intense ultraviolet radiation from the super-massive triple star system HD 206267A. For astrophotographers, it is a favorite subject for narrowband imaging as it has an abundance of Ha, OIII and SII nebulosity. The basic color image was surprisingly easy to generate using the SHO-AIP script. This utility provides a convenient way to control the contribution of narrowband, luminance and color channels into a RGB image. The solution was to generate the star mask with low growth settings and then generate a series of versions with progressive applications of Morphological Transformation, set to erode. It was very quick to try each mask in turn and examine a few stars of different sizes at 100% zoom level.
