NGC1499 California Nebula (Christophe Perroud)

NGC1499 California Nebula

After almost 3 months without any chance to image, I had a good opportunity to spend a couple of hours outside last Tuesday. Freezing temperature and windy conditions wasn’t a reason to stay at home, as the sky was perfectly clear and filled by countless stars!

I have planned to image the Orion Nebula but figured out that it was still low in the horizon at 9pm. So, I decided to turn my little Tak to NGC 1499, another interesting target it would be nice to hang on my Astrobin wall.

Setting up all the gear by -1°C (feeling -7°C due to the wind), I soon realize that not only me but even the mount was suffering of the cold mid-December weather : tracking over 90’’ was disappointing as stars turned elongated or have unexpected “double” companions, even triple sometimes.

Nevertheless, I started my session for the next 2,5 hours, accompanied by foxes’ squabbles coming from surrounding forests.

Back at home, I quickly checked the 90 frames I was able to record…and could keep only two-third due to bad tracking as explained above.

Stacking with DSS, processing with PI and final touch-up with Photoshop, as usual.

The California Nebula lies about 1’800 light-years away from our home, and spans 145 x 45 arcmin near the star Menkib (Xi Per). It was discovered by E.E. Barnard in 1884. Very faint visually, this object is a great target for astrophotographers as long-exposures will allow HII regions to stand out beautifuly.

So, this is my small contribution on NGC 1499 and hope you will enjoy it. Feedback, criticisms and comments are welcome.

Original
B
Final
C

B

Description: Astrometry version with annotated fuzzy patches! I like this feature in PI ;-)

Uploaded: ...

C

Description:01.02.2019 : some minor adjustments using different PI processes at the end of the "postproduction" stage.

Uploaded: ...

Takahashi Refractors
Imagers of Switzerland

Takahashi FS60 + DSLR

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2500288
PixInsight job	GBNWZUQN8PBVWO1FN8EO9HGPHD2DA8U8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	04h00m18s.51
RA (top/left)	04h13m13s.97
RA (top/right)	03h51m19s.40
RA (bottom/right)	03h47m41s.13
RA (bottom/left)	04h08m51s.74

Dec (center)	+36°20′20″.0
Dec (top/left)	+37°08′04″.8
Dec (top/right)	+38°22′11″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+35°27′35″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+34°15′43″.7

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