photograph and text

images

by david malin

The Fox Fur Nebula

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Over the past two years I have been busy digitally

remastering the color images from the Anglo-Australian
Observatorys 4-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope and
the 1.8-meter U. K. Schmidt telescope. The pictures were
originally made from large glass-plate negatives taken
in red, green, and blue light. These were then copied to
make black-and-white positives, which were further
combined to create large-format color negatives. This
process is the photographic equivalent of three-color
CCD imaging. The black-and-white copying stage allows
me to enhance faint details using techniques I have
developed over many years. Some of these processes
are difficult or impossible with CCD images. However,
by combining the positive images digitally, I have dramatically improved all the existing views and extracted
many new ones that would otherwise be impossible to
see using purely photographic techniques.

One of these new pictures came from a 20-year-old

set of plates from the AAT. Its subject is the open cluster and faint nebulosity associated with NGC 2264 in
Monoceros. The plates cover a full degree on the sky
and include much nebulosity that I originally thought
too faint to register on a color picture.
When I was searching for faint detail on the plates,
it became evident that parts of the field were filled
with a remarkably structured red emission nebula
that had the appearance of lustrous red hair. Adjoining the bright star S Monocerotis (at left in this photograph) is a patch of bright, dusty nebulosity. To the
northwest (upper right) of this star, the nebulas silky
structure appears to stream from a group of small,
dark clumps. These clumps resemble the dark nose
and ears of a healthy fox, unfortunately flattened into
a cape or a rug. An appropriate name for this intriguing

structure was obvious: the Fox Fur Nebula.

A more careful look at the scene suggests that the
stars in NGC 2264s cluster illuminate the surface of a
large molecular cloud. Their powerful radiation eats
into its upper layers like a blowtorch, making its constituents glow with the red light of hydrogen, the
most abundant element. But there are traces of dust
present here and there, protecting underlying regions
from the fierce stellar radiation and creating darker
patches. Its this complex interplay of gas, dust, and
starlight that created this faint but beautiful silky
strand of nebulosity in Monoceros.
Sky & Telescope contributing photographer DAVID MALIN is an
astronomer and photographic scientist at the Anglo-Australian Observatory and operates a specialized photographic
agency, David Malin Images.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope August 2001

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