NGC 6537 "Red Spider" (2013)

You may have already seen this several times before since it has already been very well processed by others so I felt there was little for me to contribute. At this point I’ve done so many planetary nebulas that I feel the need to do them all just to have a complete collection.

I spent many moments simply gazing into the center and contemplating its structure. The processing is slightly deceptive in that area. The center has been considerably darkened to allow for structural details to not be blown out. I didn’t think I was going to do it when I started with this but I ended up trying it just to see how I’d do and ended up keeping it. That center blob which appears slightly greenish is actually a cloud in front of a very bright star. It’s exactly as if you were looking up at our own sun with a small cloud just occluding it, which is to say it won’t immediately burn your retinas but it’s still unbearably bright.

Red: hst_06502_04_wfpc2_f673n_wf_sci + hst_06502_04_wfpc2_f658n_wf_sci
Green: hst_06502_04_wfpc2_f656n_wf_sci + hst_06502_04_wfpc2_f631n_wf_sci
Blue: hst_06502_04_wfpc2_f502n_wf_sci

North is NOT up.

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.