Pac Man Nebula NGC281

I was at the club observatory last week with Dan Self http://farawaythings.blogspot.co.uk/ using the 20" to observe a few faint fuzzies. A target that I have been wanting to image was the Pac Man nebula Ngc 281 so the opportunity to capture it visually too was one to good to pass up. Through the eyepiece, Time to dark adapt is essential as the nebula was large but very diffuse. Concentrating the eyes on IC1590 the open cluster the surrounding nebulosity started to permeate on the retina and come to view.

My capture here is 5 x 20 minute guided exposures through the GT81 refractor. Processed in Maxim DL and Photoshop. Levels & curves, saturation, high pass filter, unsharp mask, layer mask blending & a few selectice star spikes has produced a nicely balanced & saturated Image.