NGC281 Pacman Nebula (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: IC 1590 · NGC 281

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NGC281 Pacman Nebula

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NGC281 Pacman Nebula

This is my image of the Pacman Nebula (catalog NGC 281), located about 9,200 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is actually quite a complex object consisting of an open star cluster, ionized hydrogen, a multi-star system, and dense dust regions called Bok globules. The multi-star system has a brilliant star in the center of the nebula with four companion stars in close proximity. Only in recent decades has this nebula earned the moniker Pacman due to its passing resemblence to the popular 80's arcade game character. Massive dark dust lanes form Pac-Man's mouth. And the entire nebula is 48 light years across. To the left of the multi-star system you can clearly see a large Bok globule with about 10 stellar masses of dust which is actively forming new stars.

Imaging this nebula proved quite a challenge. It required multiple nights at the telescope battling frost and various technical issues until I finally captured enough quality light frames to provide sufficient detail. I selected forty-four 300-second exposures shot through my Baader dual-bandpass filter (Hα and OIII) at 1630mm focal length (0.7X Reducer). I then calibrated these light frames with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames. I stacked the frames with Astro Pixel Processor and post-processed with Photoshop utilizing the StarXTerminator, Astronomy Tools, and Topaz DeNoise AI plugins.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5281930
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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NGC281 Pacman Nebula

NGC281 Pacman Nebula

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NGC281 Pacman Nebula

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