Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543 (Okke_Dillen)

Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

This is my first attempt unvealing the inside structure of the Cat's Eye to become familiar with processing techniques on such objects. Eventhough this is just a scratch using a crop only, I was so excited about the result that I had to share it ;-)

It is the first part of trying to combine 2 datasets of exposure times into one image as the core of NGC 6543 is insanely bright while the "skirt" around it is not.

Conditions were windy so, I decided to use short single exposures and take a lot of them to have a pool to select from. 33 of 102 frames finally made it to the stack.

A UHC filter was used to exclude the 75%-moon and increase the contrast for Ha ond Oiii and I think it worked fine so far.

The brightness dynamics of this object is a challenge for DSLRs/OSCs. It forces me to split it in 2 takes, the core on its own, and the "skirt" also on its own. This is the core first, the skirt requires new-moon conditions....

...to be continued... ;-)

As The Eye is so extremely bright, even with only 33 minutes TET, no noise reduction was applied at all, it would have been rather destructive than useful.

Oh btw, the distance from one end to the other of NGC 6543 is 0.4 arcminutes. My field is 30 arcminutes so, this is a 75th of the full frame height. I was more than happy to see so much detail inside of it :-) (the full stack of all 102 frames together does by far not allow going this deep, much more blur, the lucky-imaging selection was a (cat's) eye-opener for me!)

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3580922
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543

Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543

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Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543

Facing the Cat - a view to the core of NGC 6543

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