Glowing Red California Nebula NGC 1499 Collaboration (Tom Masterson)

Glowing Red California Nebula NGC 1499 Collaboration

This image of the California, Nebula NGC 1499 is a collaboration between Sara Wager and myself. Sara supplied a 2x2 mosaic capturing 55x1800" of Ha monochrome data (27.5 hours!) using a Takahashi FSQ85 telescope with a Atik 460EXM camera and a 3nm Ha filter, and I supplied 20x300" or about 1h40min of color data using a Williams Optics Star 71 Astrograph telescope and a Baader filter modified Canon 6D DSLR.

A link to Sara's spectacular mono Ha image can be found here: http://swagastro.weebly.com/…/2/3/3/7/233773…/ngc1499_ha.jpg

Also here's a link to her page with tons of awesome examples of her work: http://swagastro.weebly.com/

The California Nebula is a vast area of nebulosity covering about 2.5 degrees in apparent size in the night sky, or about 5 full moons across and is about 1,800 light-years distant located in the constellation Perseus. In this image it glows red due to the abundance of ionized hydrogen within it. The gas is likely ionized by the output of the very hot and bright star in the top/center of this image, Xi Persei which goes by the more common name of Menkib. Menkib is one of the hottest and most massive stars visible to the naked eye, it is a blue-white class O7.5III giant star with a surface temperature around 37,000 K! (for reference our star the sun has a surface temperature of 5,778 K).

More info on the California Nebula: http://oneminuteastronomer.com/1141/california-nebula/

Info on Menkib: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Persei

Technical info:

Sara's Data:

2x2 panel mosaic

55x1800"

Mount: Avalon Linear Fast Reverse

Telescope Takahashi FSQ85 with 0.73x reducer

Camera: Atik 460EXM

Filter: 3nm Ha

Location: Olocau, Spain

My Data:

20x 300" @1600ISO Lights

20x Darks

20x Bias

20x Flats

Camera: 6D Baader Filter Mod by Hap Griffin

Scope: Williams Optics Star 71 Astrograph

Mount: Advanced VX

Guide Scope: Orion Mag Mini With ZWO ASI 120MCS

Capture Software: Backyard EOS

Guide Software: PHD

Stacking Software: Deep Sky Stacker

Final Processing: PSCC

Location: Los Padres National Forest, CA, USA

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	851965
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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