Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  IC 1590  ·  NGC 281
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Pacman NGC 281, John Kulin
Pacman NGC 281
Powered byPixInsight

Pacman NGC 281

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Pacman NGC 281, John Kulin
Pacman NGC 281
Powered byPixInsight

Pacman NGC 281

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This is my first attempt at a Narrowband image taken on the 7th January 2018, it was quickly processed in PixInsight and will need to be revisited, but hopefully will look a lot better in the future.

From Wikipedia: -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_281

NGC 281, IC 11 or Sh2-184 is a bright emission nebula and part of an H II region in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way's Perseus Spiral Arm. This 20×30 arcmin sized nebulosity is also associated with open cluster IC 1590, several Bok globules and the multiple star, B 1. It collectively forms Sh2-184,[3] spanning over a larger area of 40 arcmin.[4] A recent distance from radio parallaxes of water masers at 22 GHz made during 2014 is estimated it lies 2.82±0.20 kpc. (9200 ly.) from us.[5] Colloquially, NGC 281 is also known as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character.

E. E. Barnard discovered this nebula in August 1883, who described it as "a large faint nebula, very diffuse." Multiple star 'B 1' or β 1 was later discovered by S. W. Burnham, whose bright component is identified as the highly luminous O6 spectral class star, HD 5005 or HIP 4121. It consists of an 8th-magnitude primary with four companions at distances between 1.4 and 15.7 arcsec. There has been no appreciable change in this quintuple system since the first measures were made in 1875.

The nebula region is visible in amateur telescopes from dark sky locations. In his book Deep Sky Wonders, Walter Scott Houston describes the appearance of the nebula in small telescopes:[6]

"There was a faint glow in the immediate vicinity of the multiple star, with an occasional impression of a much larger nebulosity...Its surface brightness was much less than that of M33 in Triangulum or NGC 205, the distant companion of the Andromeda galaxy."

Comments

Revisions

  • Pacman NGC 281, John Kulin
    Original
  • Final
    Pacman NGC 281, John Kulin
    B

B

Description: I dropped the saturation a bit as it looked a bit gaudy and lightened the background to make it look more natural, well as Natural as a false SHO can be :-)

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Pacman NGC 281, John Kulin