Thursday, Nov 21, 2024

The area around the well-known "Ghost of Cassiopeia" had been on my agenda for a while, and this year I was finally able to make it happen. Once again, I wanted to use my fast f/2 optics and a 400mm focal length to capture not only RGB data but also as much H-alpha signal as possible across the entire region. My goal was to show how deeply IC 63 and IC 59 are embedded within the H-alpha clouds. For this, I gathered 9.5 hours of RGB and 6.75 hours of H-alpha data. To ensure that the beautiful reflection nebulae of IC 63 and IC 59 weren’t completely overwhelmed by the narrowband data, I combined the H-alpha data in this area with the RGB data using continuum substraction. Finally, I invested a few more hours in finding a good balance between the RGB and narrowband components for the final image.