Date: 1/21/2020
Description The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. [Ref: WikiPedia]
Sky Conditions: Clear skies most of the nights with no moon shine , FWHM: 2.9 arc sec/pixel
Imaging: Exposure: 100 min Color de-bayered (20 x 300 sec) at 1x1bin using Celestron LPF
Guiding: AP 80mm guidescope with guide-camera (5sec rate)
Equipment:
ZWO ASI 183 Color Pro -10 deg C
8” RASA at F2
Paramount ME Mount
SW:
SkyX, PixIsight - calibration with darks, bias and color correction (weighted batch processing, auto-script merge and noise reduction)
Observatory site : Northern VA