Fal-1 A Recently Discovered Planetary Nebula (AKA PN-G: 244.9-12.5)OTA: CDK25 f/6.8
Camera: Moravian 61000 pro
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror, Chi
Date of Capture: Jan '24
Date of Processing: Jan '24
Exposures:
R: 7 x 180 sec
G: 9 x "
B: 10 x "
H: 24 x 1200 sec
O: 16 x "
Total Exposure time: 14.6 hours
Image Width: 30.4 arc-minutes
Processing Tools:
1. Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz, Photo Director 365
2. Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator
3. My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt), QuickRestar
Target Description:
Fal-1 was discovered by Bray Falls last year (
https://www.astrobin.com/i9yy6f/). It appears to be a planetary nebula, and on an aggressively processed version of these data, there is just a hit of comets inside the rim on the right side of this image…though they are not documented in this image.
The parent of this nebula, now a dwarf star (ID DR2 5602859746161366016), is indicated on the annotated image.
Processing Description:The opening image is strictly a Ha, OIII image where Ha was mapped as red and OIII as blue-green. The image was color-calibrated and then processed as a starless image. Ultimately, the HO stars were reintroduced by a simple PixelMath tool I'm still toying with QuickRestar.
The B image was the same underlying image restarred with RGB stars using a rigorous Alpha-Compositing color-preserving PI script I wrote. There's not much difference in the star colors between the two approaches. (BTW, "screening" colors is a blending mode that reasonably maintains the colors of bright stars, but the quality can diminish as star brightness declines.)
Statistics:
Distance: 2.3 ly
Apparent Magnitude: ?
Average Surface Magnitude: ?
Apparent Span: 10 arc-minutes
Pixel Span at Target: 4B km
Alex Woronow 
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