Celebrate spooky season with a tour of the night sky's eeriest treats!

Halloween is just around the corner, which means it's the perfect season to check out some of our night sky’s eeriest treats. The following is a list of some of the most popular spooky sights that dot the universe. Not all of these haunting beauties will be visible from all latitudes, but even if you cannot view them from the field, they are all worth checking out virtually.

Our haunting cosmic journey beings with a celestial witch hunt in the constellation Eridanus, which is visible from 82° North to 90° South. In this sprawling constellation, a faint but striking reflection nebula conjures up the image of an old crone. A great target for astrophotography, the appropriately named Witch Head Nebula has a mesmerizing blue glow that adds to its creepy quotient. The likely source of this illumination is the nearby blue supergiant Rigel, which is a main attraction in the Orion constellation.

Credit: NASA/STScI Digitized Sky Survey/Noel Carboni

As the Northern Hemisphere eases into fall, Ursa Major’s popular Owl Nebula has definite autumnal appeal. Found below the bowl of the constellation’s famed Big Dipper asterism, the Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula that appears as a greenish disk marred by two dark voids that give the object its owl-like appearance. These “eyes” show up nicely in an 8-inch telescope, and the white dwarf that lurks between them reveals itself in a slightly larger telescope. Long-exposure photos will render a reddish outline around the green-hued core. 

Credit: Astrophotographer Douglas J Struble captured this image of the Owl Nebula with the aid of an Explore Scientific 152mm Carbon Fiber refractor.  

As complicated as the creature it is associated with, the Cat’s Eye Nebula is a bright planetary nebula that peers out of the night sky near the North Ecliptic Pole with an ominous blue-green glow. Although you can see it in modest telescopes, you will need to use high magnification to reveal any hints of its highly complex structure, which includes curving brown lines and radiating circles. Most will see it as a blue-green disc with a blazing central star. The nebula, which is located in the Northern Hemisphere’s Draco constellation, is a great choice for a long-exposure photo.

Credit: Astrophotographer Douglas J Struble captured this image of the Cat's Eye Nebula with the aid of an Explore Scientific ED Air-Spaced Triplet Refractor. 

Another nebula with eye-like appeal is the Ghost of Jupiter. Located in the Hydra constellation, which is visible from 54° North to 83° South, this planetary nebula can be captured in some telescopes as a blue-hued spherical cloud of gas and dust brewing around a central white dwarf. The fact that it is similar in size to our solar system’s giant planet Jupiter is what gives the nebula its name. Although it can be enjoyed with a small telescope, a larger one will show an intriguing outer halo.

Credit: Danny LaCrue & the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator

The final choice for this spooky space roundup can be found in the Southern Hemisphere’s Large Magellanic Cloud, which spills out into both the Dorado and Mensa constellations. The LMC can be seen from approximately 20° North to the South Celestial Pole. From its post in the Dorado side, the mesmerizing Tarantula Nebula dominates the web of celestial wonders that pack this galaxy. This exceptional nebula is the largest and most active star-forming region in our Local Group of galaxies. Observations by NASA’s Hubble Telescope found the Tarantula Nebula teems with more than 800,000 stars and protostars. This nebula was also the location of Supernova 1987A, which lit up on February 23rd, 1987. Visible to the naked eye, this historic event was the closest supernova observed since the invention of the telescope.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Sabbi/STScI