Messier 78 (M78) - Casper the Friendly Ghost Wide Field

An old favorite of astrophotographers, Messier 78 (M78), sometimes called the Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula, is a bright reflection nebula in Orion approximately 1,600 light years away. It’s approximately three light years in breadth. I’ve shot this target several times in several ways, so look for other images of it on here.

Technically, only the central blue region is catalogued as M78—and it’s also catalogued as vdB 59.

The blue region to the left of that is catalogued as NGC 2071 and vdB 60.

The M78 region is a hotbed for star formation. The area is packed with Herbig-Haro (HH) objects and young stellar objects (YSOs). There are 44 documented Herbig-Haro objects and 254 documented YSOs. Herbig-Haro objects are gaseous interactions that occur in proximity to newly forming stars.

When a new start begins to form, gas swirls in toward its center of gravity. This sometimes causes material to erupt perpendicular to the inflow of that swirling gas. This can create what are called bipolar jets that travel at tremendous speeds in the tens or hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. When these jets slam into the more static surrounding gas, scientists call the resulting violent interaction a Herbig-Haro object.

In the image I previously posted, I included a map of the HH objects and YSOs in the M78 region for insomniacs to examine.

There are other interesting formations in the field. A large chunk of the gigantic Barnard’s Loop appears just to the left of M78. It’s the prominent wide region of red ionized hydrogen catalogued as Sh2-278. Barnard’s Loop cuts a huge, crescent-shaped swath through the Orion constellation. Some scientists speculate that it is an ancient supernova remnant.

I previously posted a 16-panel mosaic of a large part of Orion that shows a much bigger portion of Barnard’s Loop.

Perek-Kohoutek (PK) 204-13.1 is a tiny (from our point of view) planetary nebula to the left (east) of M78. The Perek-Kohoutek Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae, published in 1967 contains 1,510 entries for planetary nebulas in our galaxy.

Directly above PK 204-13.1 in the image, you can find the reflection nebula NGC 2071. It’s a small reflection nebula William Herschel discovered in 1784.