Also known as the Running Chicken Nebula or the Lambda Cen Nebula, IC 2944 is an open cluster with an associated emission nebula found in the constellation Centaurus, near the star Lambda Centauri.

Much of the visible light from the nebula is provided by "excited" electrons in hydrogen atoms that give back energy in the form of light. I used a Ha filter to take this image. This is a narrowband filter that transmits only light with wavelengths around 656.28nm, the wavelength for emission by hydrogen know as Hydrogen alpha.

This image was taken from the iTelescope facility at Coonabarabran using my Planewave CDK 12.5 with a SBIG STX16803 camera. It has a total integration time of 4 hours.

One of the joys of using Ha and other narrowband filters is that it can be used when the Moon is full and broader spectrum imaging is more difficult. This was taken around the full Moon on 19 - 20 April 2014