NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula (Ryan Génier)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: HD236589 · HD4647 · HD5005 · HD5032 · IC 1590 · LBN 615 · LBN 616 · LBN 621 · NGC 281 · Sh2-184

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NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula

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NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula

First light for the ASI 533MC Pro.

This image is a bit of a turning point for me. I've been struggling to try and get a semi-HOO processing using the OSC and the dual narrowband filter (L-extreme). With this, I finally nailed down some of the processing steps in order to separate the layers and really bring out some colours that aren't just red. I'm super happy with how the processing turned out on this one, and looking forward to trying these steps on some new targets!

Criticism / suggestions welcome!
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Update - After reviewing the first iteration of this target, I wasn't super happy with the processing. So I took another stab at it, and am much happier with how the second revision turned out.

1. Stacked everything in PI rather than DSS. Although the final stacked images were very similar, there was a slight decrease in the noise in the PI image.

2. I spent a lot of time trying different iterations of the channel combinations. I had to push the B channel really hard to get the bright blue in the original revision, but the border between the B (OIII) and the R (Ha) was too distinct. The revision loses some of the bright colours, but the transition between channels is smoother.

3. When I finished the original rev, I noticed that there was a lot of dark pixel noise in the top left part of the nebula that I hadn't noticed before. Going back through the processing, I realized that this came up because of the DarkEnhance script. I didn't run the script this time, and the noise is much more subdued and smoothed in this rev.

Original
Final
B

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5144157
PixInsight job	T9NGE4SBDV0WTBDM307OJ2PQR6OWXQVZ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h52m30s.72
RA (top/left)	00h45m59s.99
RA (top/right)	00h49m13s.99
RA (bottom/right)	00h58m52s.30
RA (bottom/left)	00h55m56s.63

Dec (center)	+56°37′37″.5
Dec (top/left)	+57°03′40″.1
Dec (top/right)	+55°44′51″.0
Dec (bottom/right)	+56°10′20″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°30′05″.7

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NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula

NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula

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NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula

NGC 281 — Pacman Nebula

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