NGC281 The Pacman Nebula in Narrowband

[eshy76]

Hi everyone,

This has been on my hard drive for some months, so nice to have finally got round to processing it! Shot over several nights in January in my back garden.

NGC 281, also known casually as the Pacman Nebula, is a bright emission nebula and part of an H II region in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way's Perseus Spiral Arm. It lies about 9,500 light years from us and is 48 light years across.

As the final version, I've gone for a crop, which I think holds up well, though I'll include the wider fov version in the next post.

I used a more natural colour blend for this image:

R = 76%*Ha + 24%*SII
G = 100%*OIII
B = 85%*OIII + 15%*Ha

For some reason, I was not expecting much from this image, but the result looks like it will be one of my favourites...the narrowband data was really good!

Captured using APT, stacked using APP and processed in Pixinsight.

5.4 hours integration time.

Link to full details and higher res version.

Thanks for looking!

[eshy76]

And here's the original field of view

[alan potts]

Both look very nice indeed and to think you were not expecting much from, turned out well, must try this myself when my roof allows me to.

Alan

[eshy76]

25 minutes ago, alan potts said:

Both look very nice indeed and to think you were not expecting much from, turned out well, must try this myself when my roof allows me to.

Alan

Thank you Alan - yes, I collected the data pretty much as a side project to the tadpole/flaming star mosaic I was working on. It wasn't one of my primary targets for the winter - I was also after M45 and the Horsehead - so the data just got forgotten. But processing the clean narrowband data was a pleasure and NGC 281 itself surprised me with its pillars of dust and the little star cluster at its heart. It's a beautiful object in its own right, which I realised when I zoomed in.