Last Friday, the 4th September, we had some clear skies in the evening here in Neatishead and I was out making use of it with my Dwarf 3 smartscope. The moon was at last quarter and wouldn't rise until 22.29 BST. It now gets fully dark about 8.30pm BST. I decided I would have a go at the interestingly named Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia and this is what I obtained after 350x15s (1 hour 27.5 minutes) of observation:-
The first frame was taken at 22:12 BST and the last at 23:59. The duo-band filter was employed and the gain was set to 60. Auto parameters were used in Stellar Studio. I have increased the saturation and brightness of the image in Photoshop and binned it x2 (please click on the image to see a full-size view). Here is a close-up of the nebula in the centre of the frame at the full resolution of the scope:-
The nebula gets its name from its resemblance to the main character in the 1980s Pac-Man video game. The dark intrusion of gas and dust on the right looks like its mouth and the central bright star like an eye. This HII region of glowing gas is powered by IC1590 - the cluster of stars at the centre of this image. There are also several Bok Globules to be seen; these are small isolated darker areas of dust and gas that can be viewed against the brighter areas of nebula behind. They are often associated with areas where star formation is beginning to take place. The nebula lies at about 10,000 light years from us and close to the star alpha and eta Cassiopeiae.
All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment