Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars) (Dominik Weinbrenner)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: HD4647 · HD5032 · IC 1590 · LBN 615 · LBN 616 · NGC 281 · Sh2-184

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Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

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Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

This target I had initially planned to shoot with my longer FL Esprit 120. Since it's still in repair/replacement, I gave its little brother a chance.
In the end, I cropped around 50% of the surrounding field away to emphasize the actual target a bit more. I drizzled the data 2x to regain a bit of resolution at this crop.
The stars are far better with the dedicated FF (compared to the Riccardi FF/FR), but there is still some distortion (that blurs the top side of the stars). I hope to get this sorted out as well.

Processing was a bit different this time, as did deconvolution on the starless image (using the PSF created from the starful version). This is because the newly released AI11 of StarXTerminator has a tendency to pick up small deconvolution artifacts as stars (at least for me), which is basically nebulosity influenced by the Richardson-Lucy algorithm (usually this is cleaned up later in noise reduction).

SHO palette was created by carefully stretching the masters (especially Hα) to get a good base for tone mapping in Photoshop.
Stars were screened in through a luminance mask (based on the stars from the Hα channel) and further colour-enhanced by replacing the colour in Lab space with the RGB master (again through a star mask).

Enjoy!

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Re-process with improved color separation.

Uploaded: ...

Skywatcher Esprit ED Super APO Triplet
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Astrophotography Germany

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6535730
PixInsight job	MR34HN5CP773TBZLFB6WXCXY4OZUT7DC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h52m12s.96
RA (top/left)	00h51m26s.15
RA (top/right)	00h45m08s.27
RA (bottom/right)	00h52m57s.42
RA (bottom/left)	00h59m30s.27

Dec (center)	+56°43′34″.8
Dec (top/left)	+57°50′02″.4
Dec (top/right)	+56°11′35″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°36′55″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°14′00″.0

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Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

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Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

Pac-Man Nebula (NGC281, SHO with RGB stars)

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