Description:NGC 3576 is situated in the Carina constellation, approximately 9,000 light-years away from Earth, while NGC 360, also located in Carina is around 22,000 light-years away from us.
NGC 3576 has a diameter of around 100 light-years and was initially observed by John Frederick William Herschel in 1834. Presently we refer to the entire nebula as NGC 3576, although it is also recognised by the nickname "The Statue of Liberty Nebula," given to it by Dr. Steve Mazlin in 2009.
NGC 3603 right next to it on the left side of the image has some notable features. It is one of the most massive cloud of glowing gas and plasma located in the Milky Way and at its centre lies a cluster of very massive stars, which is considered to be the most densely populated concentration of such stars within the galaxy.
Due to the effects of strong ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds, the gas and dust within the region have been cleared, allowing for a clear and unobstructed view of the central cluster.And finally NGC 3590 right at the top of the image is a small open cluster of stars around 7500 light-years away. It is made of dozens of stars that are roughly 35 million years old.
Capturing and processing:This was a challenging object to capture due to the poor weather… but I managed to get about 18h of exposures in SHO with RGB stars. Here again I have drizzled the image during stacking process to increase the resolution and extract the maximum amount of detail with deconvolution. The colour blend is SHO with careful control of the Ha layer in the colour map to get the most colour contrast between the layers.
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