Oil on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

A Wedge-tailed Eagle looking beyond the viewer, in front of the Prawn Nebula.

The wedge-tailed eagle is one of the world’s most powerful avian predators. They are the largest bird of prey native to Australia with a maximum reported wingspan of 2.84 m and a length of up to 1.06m.

This very large but fairly lanky eagle has long, fairly broad wings, fully feathered legs and an unmistakable wedge-shaped tail, hence the name. The wedge-tailed eagle is one of 12 species of large, predominantly dark-coloured booted eagles in the genus Aquila found worldwide. Genetic research has clearly indicated that the wedge-tailed eagle is fairly closely-related to other, generally quite large members of the Aquila genus.
Preferred habitats tend towards those that have a fairly varied topography including rocky areas, some open terrain and native woodlots such as Eucalyptus stands.

I've painted quite a few emission nebulae - the Prawn nebula being one of them. Also known as IC 4628, this nebula is located in the constellation Scorpius and has a diameter of 250 light years across or 3-4 times the size of the full Moon as seen from Earth!

The Prawn Nebula was discovered by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard around 1900. It is a stellar nursery that contains many very hot, luminous, young stars, formed out of the surrounding gas. Included in this region are two large, hot, blue-white giants belonging to the rare spectral class O. These O-type stars burn bright and fast before ending their relatively short lives as supernovae and collapsing into either neutron stars or black holes. The blue giants in IC 4628 will end their lives after only about a million years. These two O-type and other young stars in this nebula are responsible for illuminating the surrounding gas. The stars emit an enormous amount of ultraviolet radiation which ionises the hydrogen gas in the nebula, making it glow.