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The California Nebula NGC 1499 in Perseus

Called the 'California' because of a slight resemblance to the state of the same name,  I see this large emission nebula as an Alligator head with the dark, 'Bok Globule' at top center as its eye.

Do you see him?  NGC 1499 was discovered by the great Nashville-born astronomer and photographer E. E. Barnard in 1884. This is the first image processed on a new LG L246WP-BN, 24" S-MVA LCD panel. The larger screen and visual characteristics have made postprocessing a joy. For the astronomers, the nebula is flipped on the horizontal axis for artistic reasons.