Seen here is the Monkey Head nebula, at a distance of 6,400 light years from Earth. I think I can barely see how it might resemble the profile of a monkey, looking toward the left side of the image, although it’s not hugely convincing. Like many of my other images, this is an emission nebula consisting mostly of ionized hydrogen, and is an active star formation source. You can find this in the Orion constellation, fairly close in the sky to the Jellyfish which was one of my January targets. If I’m honest, this nebula doesn’t really hold a candle to some of the other more spectacular nebulae I’ve captured recently – at least not in a wide field view like this. However, there are some amazing close up photos of this region taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, so I may revisit the Monkey Head at some future time for a narrower shot with higher magnification.
