Waca Waca Waca Waca Waca Waca

Waca waca waca waca waca waca waca. Do you remember the sound of a Pacman? I bet you are doing it right now aren’t you… Well I have found the original, the progenitor of the classic 1980’s video game chomping power pills and chasing ghosts amongst the stars of the constellation Cassiopeia.




NGC281 or the aptly named Pacman Nebula is a bright emission nebula located 9200 light years away in the Perseus arm of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Discovered in 1883 it visually looks the same today as its discovery 138 years ago. However with modern technology and a dedicated Astro camera that can capture the faintest wavelengths of light invisible to the naked eye show you clouds of gas ten thousand degrees in temperature and walls of dust ( at Pacman's mouth) not being eaten but forming new stars.
My Blue & Gold Hued image is what we call a false colour image, using filters of the Hydrogen Alpha, Sulpur ii and Oxygen iii emission lines and mapped to RGB to create a colour image you see here.

Captured over several nights I have just shy of six hours worth of data. Tell you can see him right…..

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.