NGC 281 is a large emission nebula approximately 9200 light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Located in its bounds is open cluster IC 1590 and several Bok globules - dark nebulae containing dense cosmic dust and gas where star formation may occur. Other names for this nebula is IC 11, Sh2-184, and informally known as the Pacman Nebula due to its resemblance to the video game character. IC 1590 located in the center of the image is made up of 279 stars and is considered relatively young at 3.5 million years old. The light from this cluster helps illuminate the dust in the nebula.
I have imaged this object a couple of other times, most recently a month ago but was never happy never with my results so I decided to give it a try with more Focal Length while also priming my Edge setup for galaxy season. I used the dual band IDAS NBZ filter for the nebulosity and the Optolong Luminosity filter for stars. I separated the colors and recombined using PixelMath to make an approximate HOO combination and this is the resulting palette.
The Bok globules really pop out well throughout the nebula and the edges of the nebula seem to cut through the darkness especially on the left side. Normally I am not overly joyed with the stars from the SCT but this time they came out better than expected. In part this is due to Russell Cromin and BlurXTerminator, in particular the new version and method discussed in an Adam Block video (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLyZGzT8T5c&t=738s). Also, using Bill Blanshan's Star Reduction methods helped as well.
Dates: 12-12-23, 12-13, 12-15, 1-2-24, 1-4
https://www.instagram.com/astroquest1/http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/https://www.astrobin.com/users/kurtzepp/collections/http://youtube.com/AstroQuest1
Comments