NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula (Charles Finn)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: HD236571 · HD4647 · HD5005 · HD5032 · HD5396 · HD5430 · IC 1590 · LBN 611 · LBN 615 · LBN 616 · LBN 621 · NGC 281 · Sh2-184

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NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

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NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

NGC 281, colloquially known as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character.

The Pacman Nebula is so often portrayed in narrowband SHO palette and I wanted to do something different, so I went deep in HaLRGB to portray the nebula in it's "real" colours and to reveal the surrounding dust clouds, along with several very small reflection nebulae.

For the HaLRGB combination, I created a super luminance from the Ha, L, R, G and B channels using the ImageIntegration task in PixInsight with SNR weights to maximise SNR. With the R, G, and B channels I then created a colour combination and performed SPCC for accurate colours before adding the super luminance. This results in a colour accurate rendition that maximises SNR and makes good of the high contrast detail in H-alpha.

Further processing involved further stretching of the data, star reduction, HDRMT on the starless image with a lightness mask to protect darker regions, adding the stars back in, a saturation boost in brighter parts of the image (the nebula in particular), then a final noise reduction, SCNR and black point adjustment.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
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Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9454690
PixInsight job	VENXA7K74KFCBAORH0YH04WUU8BYLIA8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h52m50s.46
RA (top/left)	00h47m59s.30
RA (top/right)	00h48m23s.68
RA (bottom/right)	00h57m28s.17
RA (bottom/left)	00h57m31s.93

Dec (center)	+56°37′38″.6
Dec (top/left)	+57°34′25″.3
Dec (top/right)	+55°39′18″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°40′12″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°35′24″.2

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NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

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NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

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