Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  27 Cas)  ·  27 gam Cas  ·  28 Cas)  ·  28 ups02 Cas  ·  HD236542  ·  HD236578  ·  HD236592  ·  HD236605  ·  HD236612  ·  HD236625  ·  HD236628  ·  HD236630  ·  HD236632  ·  HD236633  ·  HD236639  ·  HD236655  ·  HD236664  ·  HD236667  ·  HD236678  ·  HD4404  ·  HD4488  ·  HD4561  ·  HD4562  ·  HD4601  ·  HD4674  ·  HD4817  ·  HD4854  ·  HD4931  ·  HD4978  ·  HD5015  ·  And 81 more.
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IC63: The Ghost of Cassiopeia and Surrounding Gas, Bray Falls
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IC63: The Ghost of Cassiopeia and Surrounding Gas

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IC63: The Ghost of Cassiopeia and Surrounding Gas, Bray Falls
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IC63: The Ghost of Cassiopeia and Surrounding Gas

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Description

Gamma Cassiopeia is a very hot and luminous star in the middle of the W asterism of Cassiopeia. The light and radiation of this star create many dramatic details in the surrounding dust and gas, and the best of these is the Ghost of Cassiopeia itself. The Ghost is catalogued as IC63, and also as IC59 (for the fainter region). All these IC objects are but small portions of a greater Ha region called Sh2-185. If one captured enough Halpha data, these brightest features meld into the greater surrounding cloud, and you can see the context of the situation a bit better. 

The central star Gamma Cass is actually a multiple-star system, with three smaller companions, but Gamma Cass dominates the group as the brightest. Apparently, it is also spinning unusually quickly, at a speed of 500km/s at the equator. For reference our sun spins at 2 km/s at its equator. Fun fact, this is enough for the star to lose material at its equator! 

This whole region is also full of lots of diffuse dust and dark nebulae, which help add some nice detail to the region. 

Note: 
For those who don't know, I have a series of processing guides on my website, where I include raw data with many hours of image processing to show how I edit my images. For this guide, I am starting to edit subscriber data to help provide some practical processing examples from other types of setups. So if you're struggling to process an image, consider signing up so that we can all learn as a group through your example! I am coordinating data sharing and other discussions via my discord page. 

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IC63: The Ghost of Cassiopeia and Surrounding Gas, Bray Falls