The Chalice Nebula is an Emission nebula formed by the ionising radiation from the stars in the NGC 2018 cluster and is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. About 163000 light years away. So named because it (apparently) resembles a Goblet/Chalice. Close to NGC 2018 is another cluster (HDE269676) of Type O massive stars (~80 Solar masses). HDE269676 was thought to be a single massive star of 120 solar masses. This has since been disproved and is now known to be a cluster. Also seen is the supernova remnant, SNR0532-71.0
There are surprisingly few close-up images of the Chalice on Astrobin. A crude search brought up only 8 images. The region is not particularly difficult to access from southern skies.
The key challenge in processing was the
very rich star field of the LMC (image below), due to which the nebula itself fades away.
A careful and balanced star reduction was required to bring out the details of the nebula.
The two images above were in shot in Narrowband-Monochrome and processed in SHO and HOO. For HOO, I have used a synthetic Luminance extracted from the SHO image. I find (possibly very subjectively), that this adds some more detail. The star were shot in RGB.
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