Pacman Nebula - NGC 281

The Pacman nebula or NGC 281 is a bright emission nebula in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia.

NGC 281 is estimated at 9200 light years from us and is 48 light years wide.

 

-Equipment-

Scope: TS-Optics 94/414 EPDH (414mm focal)

Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -5°C

Guiding: ZWO OAG

Guiding camera: ZWO ASI 120MM

Mount: Skywatcher NEQ5

Filter: Optrolong L-eXtreme

 

-Acquisition-

Light :167x300s ( 14h ) at Gain:101 Offset:49

Dark-100x300s Flat-50 Bias-100

Date : Take on 5 night 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 september 2021

Location : France-Alsace Bortle 4/5

 

-Software-

Carte du Ciel, N.I.N.A, Phd2 , PoleMaster and PixInsight

I use the ForaxX palette for HOO combination

ForaxX website : thecoldestnights.com

And the Ez Processing Suite from darkarcon

darkarcon website : darkarchon.internet-box.ch:8443/

 

-Pre Processing in PixInsight-

Image Calibration

Cosmetic Correction

Debayer

Subframe Selector

Star Alignement

Local Normalization

Drizzle x2

Dynamic crop

 

-Processing

 

DynamicBackgroundExtractor the master_LRGB

 

___RGB layer___

Split RGB channels for build Ha and Oiii

Ha=R Oiii= B*0.3+G*0.7

EZ_Soft Stretch

HOO combination with Foraxx formula

R=Ha

G=((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Oiii

B=Oiii

Starnet++ for remove stars and build a mask nebula

Color Saturation

Curves Tansformation (K,saturation,hue)

Saturate stars for push up stars color

SCNR with star Mask for remove green in stars (OSC camera)

Bring back the stars with PixelMath

 

___L layer___

Ez_Deconvolution

Ez_Denoise

Ez_Soft Stretch

Ez_HDR

Local Histogram Equalization with nebula mask

UnsharpedMask with nebula mask

 

___LRGB___

Final Curve Transformation

DarkStructureEnhance script

EZ_Star Reduction

 

Save as BMP 32bit file

 

Clear skies !

Done