Gavdos, Greece, Extoristoi Astro Resort

This image is a joint effort between me, 10 years ago, shooting the giant squid (OU4), and my recent work to create a larger in-context view of the area, during my travel to Gavdos Extoristoi Astrofarm earlier this month.

So, for the teal colored Giant Squid:

It’s image was processed with special care to maintain the accurate teal color of OIII - an even combination of blue and green.

A mysterious, squid-like apparition, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth's sky. In the image, composed with narrowband data
from the Israeli Negev desert, it spans some 2.5 full moons toward the constellation Cepheus. Recently discovered by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters,
the remarkable nebula's bipolar shape and emission are consistent with it being a planetary nebula, the gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star,
but its actual distance and origin are unknown. An investigation suggests Ou4 really lies within the emission region SH2-129 some 2,300 light-years away.
Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven by a triple system of hot, massive stars, cataloged as HR8119,
seen near the center of the nebula. If so, this truly giant squid nebula would physically be nearly 50 light-years across. (ref: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140718.html)

As for the Seahorse, some of you may remember my old image where I’ve given it its, nowadays, widely accepted name “the seahorse nebula” https://pbase.com/boren/image/134893480).

A dark nebula is a type of interstellar cloud that is so dense that it obscures the light from the background emission or reflection nebula or that it blocks out background stars.
The extinction of the light is caused by interstellar dust grains located in the coldest, densest parts of larger molecular clouds. Clusters and large complexes of dark nebulae
are associated with Giant Molecular Clouds. Isolated small dark nebulae are called Bok globules. Dark clouds appear so because of submicrometre-sized dust particles,
coated with frozen carbon monoxide and nitrogen, which effectively block the passage of light at visible wavelengths. The form of such dark clouds is very irregular:
they have no clearly defined outer boundaries and sometimes take on convoluted serpentine shapes. The largest dark nebulae are visible to the naked eye, appearing as
dark patches against the brighter background of the Milky Way. In the inner regions of dark nebulae important events take place, such as the formation of stars and masers.

Barnard 150 is a remarkable filamentary cloud within the Cepheus Flare in the constellation of Cepheus centered at ~ RA 20h 51d and DEC +60d 16h. It is also known as
Lynds (L1082) and GF 9 in the catalog of globular filaments by Schneider and Elmegreen (1979). In this image North is down. This object comprises 3 dense cores where
new star formation is occurring.

Finally, I took great pleasure in shooting and creating this depiction of a great and wondrous patch of sky Spending many, many hours alone under perfect starlit skies,
in the desert (for the squid) and on a desolate beautiful beach of a Greek island, does much to make one’s soul admire its being one with it all.