Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543 (Sky Story)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Draco (Dra) · Contains: Cat's Eye Nebula · IC 4677 · NGC 6543 · NGC 6552

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Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

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Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

This was one of the toughest images I ever shot and developed. I shot it over two nights. One night had crystal clear transparency and great seeing but a glaring full moon. The other night had no moon but viciously bad seeing. Careful light balancing of the first data set and aggressive culling of the second data set turned out useful information. That information then turned into the longest and most complicated image processing session I ever had as the Cat's Eye Nebula has extremely different levels of luminance over a small area, and the image had to be subdivided into three luminance-based layers to reveal the core, the middle and the outer parts of the nebula all within the same image. The core is so bright compared to the rest of the nebula that I extracted it so it could be viewed on its own. It is visible in the box top right.

Basic processing in PixInsight. The image was then transferred to Affinity Photo to be divided into layers and each discreetly processed before compositing back together.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9757371
PixInsight job	JPNWCWIZLV25094FR793HLHUQ9774YVU
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	17h59m03s.440
RA (top/left)	18h00m30s.257
RA (top/right)	17h57m37s.772
RA (bottom/right)	17h57m37s.171
RA (bottom/left)	18h00m28s.465

Dec (center)	+66°37′39″.41
Dec (top/left)	+66°42′24″.49
Dec (top/right)	+66°42′36″.99
Dec (bottom/right)	+66°32′50″.95
Dec (bottom/left)	+66°32′38″.86

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Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

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Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

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