CCD Sky Observatory

Images by Christopher Cappelli

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NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula

NGC 281, also known as the Pacman Nebula, is located about 10,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.

The data for this image was acquired on September 4th, 5th, and 6th, 2008 at the CCD Sky Observatory in Redlands, California, USA.  The final image seen here represents the combination of 13 hours worth of exposure (25 x 20-minute Ha (3nm) exposures and 15 x 20-minute OIII (3nm) exposures) taken with a Takahashi FSQ-106ED telescope and a QSI 532wsi camera cooled to -10° C.

The two sets of sub-exposures (Ha and OIII) were processed using CCDStack and Photoshop CS.  The images were calibrated, registered, normalized, STD sigma reject and combined in CCDStack.  The two resulting images (Ha and OIII) were  then brought into Photoshop for final processing.  Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for Photoshop were used for local contrast enhancement, and to synthesize a green channel from the red channel (Ha) and the blue channel (OIII).  Some additional processing was also done in Photoshop to balance the color and contrast of the image.