NGC281 - The packman nebula

Not too far away from the Ghost of Cassiopeia (SH2-185) we'll find the Pacman Nebula NGC281. The similarity to the computer game Pac-Man from1980. In this image we may spot an eye observing us.

The Pacman nebula is a relatively bright emission nebula. Its gases are ionized by the radiation emitted from the embedded starcluster IC1590.

At the bottom edge plenty of dense molecular clouds can be spotted:

These dense clouds will likely form new stars in the distant future.

This is not my first try to capture the Pacman nebula, but I never was happy with the results. Now, with more focal length and much more experience editing astronomical data, it was time for a new approach. For the image above I used the, so called, Hubble palette to integrate the narrowband data. So the nominally red Hydrogen data is colored green, Sulphur in red and Oxygen in blue.

My first try in 2021 with an OSC and only three hours of integration time looked like this: