IC63 The Ghost of Cassiopeia (Jim Raskett)

IC63 The Ghost of Cassiopeia

"About 550 light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia lies IC 63, a stunning and slightly eerie nebula. Also known as the ghost of Cassiopeia, IC 63 is being shaped by radiation from a nearby unpredictably variable star, Gamma Cassiopeiae, which is slowly eroding away the ghostly cloud of dust and gas.
The remarkable Gamma Cassiopeiae is a blue-white subgiant that is surrounded by a gaseous disc. This star is 19 times more massive and 65,000 times brighter than our Sun. It also rotates at the incredible speed of 1.6 million kilometres per hour -- more than 200 times faster than our parent star. This frenzied rotation gives it a squashed appearance. The fast rotation causes eruptions of mass from the star into a surrounding disk. This mass loss is related to the observed brightness variations.The radiation of Gamma Cassiopeiae is so powerful that it even affects IC 63, sometimes nicknamed the Ghost Nebula, that lies several light years away from the star. IC 63 is visible in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.The colours in the eerie nebula showcase how the nebula is affected by the powerful radiation from the distant star. The hydrogen within IC 63 is being bombarded with ultraviolet radiation from Gamma Cassiopeiae, causing its electrons to gain energy which they later release as hydrogen-alpha radiation -- visible in red in this image.This hydrogen-alpha radiation makes IC 63 an emission nebula, but we also see blue light in this image. This is light from Gamma Cassiopeiae that has been reflected by dust particles in the nebula, meaning that IC 63 is also a reflection nebula".

I saw this target imaged by a fellow astrophotographer on a forum that we both belong to and was very intrigued by his image.

What a cool looking target!

I usually do better with brighter targets from my Bortle 7 location, but I tried my luck at this dim (mag 13.3) beauty.
Imaged over two evenings last week.

I was happily surprised that I got something halfway nice. The tone might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I tried it in straight red and this version just popped to me.
I thought that the background looked slightly bluish, but sampling the background in Photoshop shows that the RGB levels are matched.

Thanks for looking and please share any thoughts that you might have on improvement.

Jim

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Slight reduction in blue to reduce the purple/pink hue to the lighter areas of nebulosity.
Brightened nebula and faint areas of nebulosity at the bottom of the image.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7853274
PixInsight job	19P3JM0SZQPD29N1SVHPL3V6I9BZOZT7
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	01h01m50s.87
RA (top/left)	00h51m32s.87
RA (top/right)	00h53m03s.75
RA (bottom/right)	01h11m27s.31
RA (bottom/left)	01h11m19s.38

Dec (center)	+60°45′31″.6
Dec (top/left)	+61°50′56″.3
Dec (top/right)	+59°31′33″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	+59°37′20″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	+61°57′13″.3

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