NGC 281 The Pacman Nebula with Foraxx Stars (Jim Raskett)

NGC 281 The Pacman Nebula with Foraxx Stars

From Wikipedia:
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, spanning over a larger area of 40 arcmin. 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. Colloquially, NGC 281 is also known as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character.

This was somewhat of a fill-in target while I was imaging the Lobster Claw nebula recently.
I also wanted to image this target to improve on my last result from several years ago. This is a wider field view against a dense star field with no reduction besides BXT. I kind of like the stars.
The RGB stars are marginal, but do show some natural color against the narrowband image. Need to work on better capture star methods.

I like this natural color version (for now). I am sure that I will try a HOO or SHO process soon.

Thanks for looking!

Jim

B

Description: Removed slight greenish tint from the smaller stars.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: Must have added the RGB stars with a mask on the nebula that didn't include the stars that supply the energy to the Packman!!! Fixed now!

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Never liked the quality of the RGB stars, so I used a Forax synthetic RGB method. Not perfect, but the stars retain the narrowband profile and have really nice color!

Jim

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: Second version with Forax stars. Less saturation.

Uploaded: ...

F

Description: Increased star reduction

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8519426
PixInsight job	AZMM6JT92X3BKD5UYRLD0KRQVWL4WRAU
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h52m51s.14
RA (top/left)	01h01m36s.71
RA (top/right)	00h59m21s.51
RA (bottom/right)	00h43m41s.84
RA (bottom/left)	00h46m45s.71

Dec (center)	+56°39′12″.6
Dec (top/left)	+55°46′19″.9
Dec (top/right)	+57°52′14″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+57°29′38″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°25′00″.5

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