Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  IC 59  ·  IC 63  ·  The star Navi (γCas)
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The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63), JohnEEvans
The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63)
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The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63), JohnEEvans
The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63)
Powered byPixInsight

The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63)

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Description

The Ghost of Cassiopeia in SHO.

Dust clouds in the constellation Cassiopeia are illuminated by the large and very bright star, Gamma Cas. The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63) appears from behind a wall (IC 59).

IC 63 is about 550 light-years away. The radiation from Gamma Cas causes a strong emission signal in Ha from the illuminated dust. There are also reflection signals.

The image was captured on one night in the SHO palette with dithering. Processed in PixInsight as follows:
1. Each filter was stacked with drizzle, cropped, ezDenoise and DBE.
2. Combined in SHO and stretched.
3. Removed stars with StarNet and de-emphasised with ezStarReduction.
4. Extracted L, R, G and B and removed Gamma Cas halos with GameMask and HistogramTransformation.
5. Sharpened L with LocalHistogramEqualisation and HDRMultiscaleTransform.
6. Recombined R, G and B are adjusted colours, saturation, etc.
7. LRGBCombination and added stars with PixelMath.
8. Gamma Cas. I had a very difficult time trying to improve this. In the end I removed some artefacts with CloneStamp and convolved it. I'm sure there will be better ways of dealing with this.

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The Ghost of Cassiopeia (IC 63), JohnEEvans