From the Scream Nebula to bobbing for planets in daylight, Halloween offers an ample bag of treats.

The large, faint emission nebula Sharpless 2-92 bears a resemblance to the famous painting "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.

Timothy Martin (left) and Edvard Munch

In recent years, amateur astrophotographers post some of their favorite ghoulish celestial images to celebrate the spirit of Halloween. They feature ghostly nebulae, skeletons, giant spiders, witches, skulls, and zombies. Not long ago, I heard about The Scream Nebula. Formally known as Sharpless 2-92 , it's located in Vulpecula near the Little Veil Nebula . It takes only a little imagination to picture this otherwise innocent cloud of ionized hydrogen gas as a celestial stand-in for the angst-ridden face in The Scream by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.

Munch painted the scene after a real-life experience while walking on a road above an Oslo fjord.…