When I was a teenager I loved to play Space Invaders at video arcades. We didn't have Playstations or XBoxes, but for a quarter you could experience some amazing graphics for the time. Another popular game, not one of my favorites but addictive nonetheless, was Pac-Man.
There's a very nice bright emission nebula in Cassiopeia, NGC 281, which has earned the name "The PacMan Nebula" because its shape has an uncanny resemblance to that little gobbling monster of PacMan fame. I doubt that NGC 281 is actually devouring everything in its path as it flies through outer space, but it's still a fun object to observe either visually or in the camera.
I took this image over 4 nights in mid-October. Click Here for a larger version of the image. I wound up discarding much of the data and used only the best subframes. I used the Hydrogren Alpha filter to obtain luminance data, and also combined it with the red, green, and blue channels in an 80%, 5%, and 10% mix accordingly. Since NGC 281 shines brightly in H-alpha, using it in this manner helped bring out some of the contrast.
There's been a lot going on lately in my "normal" life, but as always I'll try to keep this blog on the astronomy track. I've been working on the shed project for Xanadu West and hope to pour pier foundations this weekend. I've also been imaging a lot recently, with the help of CCDAutopilot which has been an awful lot of fun. The data is getting backed up...
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