NGC 281 - Pacman Nebula with a custom palette.
Constellation Guide: 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.
I was getting tired of the SHO palette and wanted something different.
The Red channel has both Ha and Sii.
The Green channel has both Ha and Oiii
The Blue channel was magnified to bring out more blue.
Most of the processing was done in the unstretched state so I wouldn't blow out any of the highlights.
There will be those who don't like the purple, I'm not crazy about it but I wasn't successful at removing it.
This is more of an artistic interpretation than a realistic rendition !!!
Update 10-20-22
There are a lot of very dim areas in the outskirts of this nebula.
I added more subs and as a result I picked up more of these dim areas in my latest image.
Update 1/13/2023
I reprocessed this image using a variant of the SHO palette.
Monty
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