Cat’s Eye Nebula - Planetary Nebula in constellation Draco (The Dragon)
3,000 LY away, 3 LY across, over 50,000 years old
Symmetrical rings of Oxygen and Hydrogen emission expelled during the later stages of stellar evolution.
I found this to be not an easy image to process. The far too bright core of the PN was probably my fault for using 600 second OIII and Ha exposures. It would be nice to revisit this target and capture multiple short exposures (with more time on target as well) to maybe get a better handle on the core. To see a truly remarkable image of what the core comprises check out this Hubble image:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110424.htmlWhile the PN itself is captured in narrow band HOO, the RGB stars were captured separately with a second scope. This was done to ‘commission’ a new Todmorden cinder block pier. Results were very good with the best tracking results the old iOptron iEQ45 has provided to date. Thank you to Cloudy Nights for the pier concept and construction recommendations.
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