Derby and District Astronomical Society



NGC 281
The Pacman Nebula

Emission Nebula in Cassiopeia
RA 00h 52m 48s  Dec +56° 37' 00"

[NGC Index]



John M Hill captured this image of the Pacman Nebula on the 3rd January 2026 using a Seestar S30 smart telescope. It is comprised of 1670 x 10 second exposures. Other than rudimentary denoise by the Seestar, no other processing was employed.  Image Credit: John M Hill.




This image of the Pacman Nebula was captured by Russ Pollard on the 8th September 2025 using a Seestar S50 smart telescope mounted on an Astro Essentials adjustable wedge and tripod. Live stacking of 20 second exposures and AI denoise was employed.  Image Credit: Russ Pollard.



Adrian Brown took the following two images of NGC 281 over multiple nights in August and September 2006. An ATIK ATK16HR CCD camera and a Skywatcher 80ED refractor at f7.5 was used to collect the data. The first is a colour image which was created from twenty-two 30 minute hydrogen-alpha and twelve 30 minute exposures taken through an Astronomik 13nm oxygen III filter. The hydrogen-alpha data was assigned to the red channel, the Oxygen III data was assigned to the blue channel and Adrian used Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools Photoshop plugin to create a synthetic green channel. The black and white image is composed of twenty-two x 30 minute exposures taken with an Astronomik 6nm hydrogen-alpha filter.  Image Credit: Adrian Brown.


[Top]