Astrobdlbug Posted October 27 Share Posted October 27 (edited) This turned out ok - its been a bit of a test target as I have been setting up my AT106EDT with reducer, mono camera and new large 2" filter wheel, so lots of tweaking to avoid the filter wheel colliding with the pier and setting up NINA meridian flip conditions, basically stop 5 mins before flip and flip 5 mins after - that works and filter wheel doesnt touch the pier 🙂 Between Sunday night and last night, Thursday I gathered 5 hrs combined on three filters. The Pac-Man is an interesting target in that the bright central region is quite straightforward to capture, but it sits in a large area of Ha gas and balancing that in processing to highlight the Ha cloud and not over stretching the core is a challenge. I didnt have a lot of Ha data anyway so I have probably pushed the Ha integration further than it supports but RC-Noise XT helps.. The Pac-Man nebula, NGC 281, lies approx 9,200 light years from earth and lies in northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way's Perseus Spiral Arm. The nebula has been measured/estimated to be 49 light years in diameter. Telescope: AT106EDT with Ricardi 0.75X FF/FR Camera: ASI2600MM Filters : Antlia 3nm Ha, Oiii, Sii All captured as 5 minute subs Ha : 2hrs Sii : 2hrs Oiii : 1hr Used NINA to control capture then APP and Pixinsight to process. The colour palette is a 50:50 mix of AIP_SHO and Foraxx scripts with HOO stars Bryan Edited October 30 by Astrobdlbug 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmack1 Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Nice image delicately processed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phillyo118 Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Beautiful! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carastro Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Don't think I have seen so much nebulosity surrounding the Pacman before. Well done. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrobdlbug Posted October 28 Author Share Posted October 28 3 hours ago, Carastro said: Don't think I have seen so much nebulosity surrounding the Pacman before Thanks Carole, I saw an image a while ago that showed how much Ha nebulosity was in this area, so I processed the image with GHS to tease out this nebulosity as a deliberate choice - it’s faint and I am hoping to add more Ha to see how far I can go in highlighting this Bryan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrobdlbug Posted October 30 Author Share Posted October 30 Just updated the image with a different colour palette and addition of 7 hrs of Ha. Got some clear skies Friday and Sunday and although was full moon, 3nm Antlia still came through with some good Ha data. Sunday was very opportunistic in that I was settled down watching F1 Mexio GP and then it got red flagged, looked outside, saw it was clear, so while the red flag was on the race I quickly opened the POD and got my NGC281 NINA sequence up and running - left it to do its thing and went back in to watch end of GP, got 3.5 hrs in the end by 1am so bit of a result really.. I think that the Ha that surrounds NGC 281 is faint and the main nebula is very bright making it quite a good target to achieve an image in one night. I used MultiScale HDR applied to the HA as pushing the faint Ha can quite easily blow out the main nebula core. Anyway been a bit of fun with what started out as a shake down of my narrownabd rig for winter, AT106EDT a 5 position filter wheen with 2" Antlia filters and ASI2600MM - lets see how this winter turns out weather wise... Bryan This is the processed Ha, with and without stars : 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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