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The Pacman Nebula NGC 281 is a large emission nebula appearing near the orange giant star Schedar in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is located in the Perseus arm of our Milky Way galaxy.
It is informally referred to as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character of the 1980s. The mouth of Pacman in particular.
It’s a cosmic cloud of space gas. Stars may still be forming within the nebula’s large lanes of dark obscuring gas and dense dust. This nebula is associated with an open cluster of stars called IC 1590 at center.
The nebula is 48 light years across and approximately 6,500 to 9,200 light years from earth.
I used three narrow band filters, H-a (656nm), OIII (501 nm), and SII (672 nm), from Optolong to capture the data. However, for this I only processed using the Ha and OIII to create this bicolour image.
Image Technical:
Skywatcher Esprit 100mm F5.5 Triplet Refractor https://bit.ly/3wfqoci
QHY268M CMOS Camera (https://bit.ly/3Aj23FE), 26mp, 3.76um @ -10C
QHY CFW3-L 7 position https://bit.ly/3jAp9Sb
Optolong Ha-R-G-B filters https://bit.ly/3dvhqBa
Skywatcher EQ6 mount / Skyshed Pier (Skyshedpod.com)
Pegasus Astro Focus Cube https://bit.ly/3dzagfr
Starfield 50mm guidescope https://starfieldoptics.com/
Player One mono guidescope https://www.ontariotelescope.com / PHD2
NINA 1.11 (nightly build) for acquisition
Processed in PixInsight
Seeing and transparency: average to good
Total integration time: 10hr
Location: Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
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My story began more than 40 years ago looking up at the Moon with a small telescope my Father had. Encouraged by my parents, who bought me my very own telescope, a 4.5″ reflector, I began to explore the night sky from my family home backyard. Today I do astrophotography from my home in Kitchener, Ontario and also with remote telescopes located in New Mexico and Australia. Some of my images have won awards and have been featured online and in magazines.
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