Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  IC 1590  ·  NGC 281
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NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127, scottacrosby
NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127
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NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127, scottacrosby
NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127
Powered byPixInsight

NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

NGC281 - Pacman Nebula. This is my first time shooting this subject. It was a fainter nebula in comparison with some others I've done. It came out a bit noisier and has a small lens reflection on the left side of the image I couldn't process out that came into the image from the OII data. Later, I'll try to add some cleaner data and reprocess this image.  It’s about 13 and a half hours of data shot over three nights in mono narrowband and edited with the Hubble palette. This is also from a Bortle 5 zone. Also, balancing the SHO color palette within Pixinsight is still an ongoing battle. It's hard to get a consistent look, any tips are welcome! 

Thanks to all of the youtube tutorials from Cuiv, the Lazy geek, VisibleDark, and Entering into Space. Without these, this wouldn't have been possible, you guys rock!

SHO Palette Mix:
HA 46 x 300 Sec ( 3 hours and 50 Minutes) (80% in Green Channel)
OIII 57 X 300 Sec ( 4 hours and 45 Minutes) (Blue Channel)
SII 59 X 300 Sec (4 hours and 55 minutes) (Red Channel, 20% in Green Channel)

Process Flow:

Astro Pixel Processor Workflow for each set; HA, SII, and OIII:
0) Defaults
1) Single Session Processing: Sorting frames: quality
2) Checked to create 32-bit Masters
3) 1000 stars
4)  Defaults
5) Defaults
6) Lights to stack 90%, integrate Average, filter Winsorized Rejection, LNC Degree. 2nd degree, x2 Drizzle

PixInsight Workflow:
Dynamic crop, EZ Denoise, All images star aligned with the HA data
Dynamic Background Extraction
Combined with Pixel Math into SHO Palette R=SII G= (Ha*.8+SII*.2) B=OIII
Conservative Masked Stretch, Background Neutralization, Color Calibration, SCNR (Green)
StarXterminator to make Stars and Starless images
Curves Transformation on Starless for saturation and contrast using color masks (Magenta, Green, Cyan, and Red)
Rangemask and Unsharp Masks on Starless to enhance brighter structures
Dark structure enhance script on Starless
Convolution on Stars image to smooth out the stars
Curves Transformation on Stars Image for saturation and contrast
Create final version using PixelMath stars+Starless
EZ Star Reduction Script
Save Image as 16 bit TIFF for Lightroom

Lightroom:
Slight Exposure decrease
Slight white balance shift
Increase Whites slightly
Additional Color Balance via Tone Curve
Luminescence adjustment via HSL

Comments

Revisions

  • NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127, scottacrosby
    Original
  • Final
    NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127, scottacrosby
    B

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

NGC281 - Pacman Nebula - ED127, scottacrosby