NGC 1999 (2013)

This was already processed but when I peered at this data in the HLA and compared it with the Heritage release I felt that it was cropped a bit closer than necessary. I also applied some sharpening. I was also happy to leave the orientation intact (I secretly hate rotating them from north up even though it almost always looks better).

The most interesting thing about this object is actually the lack of an object—it’s a hole. You can read the Heritage article at the link above and even an APOD mistakenly called this object a bok globule. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and all I can see is a hole now but it’s easy to understand how it was mistaken for a bok globule at the time. Anyway, there is already a nebula named Keyhole which is unfortunate because this one really is a hole and it is rather keyhole shaped.

Red: hst_08548_01_wfpc2_f675w_wf_sci
Green: hst_08548_01_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci
Blue: hst_08548_01_wfpc2_f450w_wf_sci

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.