Wacka Wacka Wacka…. or shall we say NGC281, also known as the Pacman nebula. NGC 281, IC 11 or Sh2-184 is a bright emission nebula, part of an H II region in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way’s Perseus Spiral Arm. It lies 9200 ly. from us. There are many pictures available of the bright red emission area. This rendition is the result of RGB data only. I was surprised to see that the well-known Pacman shape is surrounded by brown molecular clouds. I guess that once you inject narrowband into the data (as it’s done often with NGC281) it suppresses the signal of the molecular clouds.
NGC 281 – The Pacman Nebula
Telescope: 16″ f3.75 Dream Scope
Camera: FLI ML16803
Mount: ASA DDM85
Exposure Time: 7 hours (3x28x300s RGB)
Date: August 2021
Location: Southern Alps, France
And here’s the version with narrowband mapping according the well known Hubble palette, adding 10 hours of integration time.
Bart Delsaert - Astrophotography 