NGC 1499 - California nebula - bright nebula in Perseus.
We are having some unusually warm weather and thus jumped on the opportunity to get out under the stars during this new moon.
A rare night this month without much Aurora.
I love both DSOs and aurora, and always bring my light camera gear just in case. This night seemed to be reserved for the deep sky.
In this image I went for 48 x 300 seconds integration, using an L-enhance filter, binned 1x1. My guiding improved as the target climbed steadily out of the east toward zenith.
Astro dark happened at 7:30 pm and I shot this one for a number of hours (4 or so, with some subs chucked out for aircraft and satellites).
Wiki says: It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low
surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a
Hα filter (isolates the H
α line at 656 nm) or H
β filter (isolates the H
β line at 486 nm) in a rich-field
telescope under dark skies.
[1] It lies at a distance of about 1,000
light years from
Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the H
β line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star,
Xi Persei (also known as
Menkib, seen at center below it in the inset at right).
[2]The California Nebula was discovered by
E. E. Barnard in 1884.
Thanks very much for looking, I hope you enjoy my version of the California nebula.
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