The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the state of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the Hβ line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star, xi Persei (also known as Menkib, seen at bottom center). The California Nebula was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884. [Source: Wikipedia]

The image was captured with my TMB80ss refractor, mounted on the venerable Meade 12"LX200. The imaging camera was the Canon 450DXsi, at F6.3 (native 504mm FL). Imaging subs were taken around 18C, and 6 minutes each.

Image -- 79 subs at 360sec (7.90 hr) on Jan 12th and 13th, 2016.

Processing was done with PixInsight, following reasonably good practice. North is up, and this is a slight crop notwithstanding the star distortion in the corners. I thought it came out pretty good.



While my Atik 383L+m is now back from the U.K., I'm waiting for a field flattener to arrive before using the camera. My goal will then be to capture some Halpha subs with the CCD and combine them with the above color image from the DSLR.

UPDATE - Jan 29, 2016:

Added 20 subs of Ha at 6 minutes each and -10C, taken with the Atik383L+m camera and EFW2 filter wheel thru the TMB80SS scope with an Orion Field Flattener. Due to the component stackup, I was not able to squeeze in my OAG5 off axis guider. Consequently I used my new Solomark F50 50mm f3.4 guidescope with the Lodestar camera for guiding. I was able to eliminate most (but not all) of the relative motion (differential flexure) twixt the guide scope and imaging scope.