Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm FL)  Captured at 3.5 arcsec/pixel.  Shown resampled to 16.8 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Filters

Acquisition Data

12/27/2008 to 1/3/2009 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3

Exposure

Ha    300 min. (10 x 30 min. bin 1x1)
OIII  270 min. (9  x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  150 min. (5  x 10 min. Each... bin 1x1)

Ha, OIII & OIII are mapped to RGB respectivly.  An RGB overlay was added for the star colors.
Click here for a BW Ha version

Click here for a narrowband color mapped version.

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator.

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject & combine sub exposures.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching and color combine.

Comment

North is to the bottom, I think it looks better up side down.

The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is located in the constellation Perseus at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California. NGC 1499 is a classic emission nebula, around 100 light-years long. It glows with the red light characteristic of hydrogen atoms recombining with long lost electrons, stripped away (ionized) by energetic starlight.

Because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually and was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884.