I screwed up my backfocus and didn't notice till the next day, so this is a tight shot, and there are still bad stars in the corners. I'll get it fixed for the next shoot, though. The Pacman Nebula (NGC 281) is a large emission nebula appearing near the orange giant
Schedar in the constellation
Cassiopeia. The nebula lies approximately 9,200 light-years away and occupies 35 arcminutes of the apparent sky. It is also catalogued as IC 11 and Sharpless 184 (Sh2-184). It was named the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to Pac-Man, the character in the popular 1980s maze video game. In optical images, a dark dust lane forms the Pac-Man’s mouth.The Pacman Nebula stretches 48 light-years across. It is a star-forming region with young stars, large dark dust lanes and Bok globules. Bok globules are small, dense dark nebulae packed with material from which new stars are formed. The dark dust lane spreads unevenly across glowing clouds of hydrogen and its appearance suggests that it is sculpted by a massive star in the background, concealed by the dark clouds.
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