NGC1499 - The California Nebula

narrowband nebulae

NGC1499 is a huge nebula resembling the state of California (hence the name). At roughly 2.5 degrees wide, a full moon could fit about 4 times across in this image – quite large indeed! In natural light, the nebula is red, but this image is a narrowband 2 frame mosaic (stitched together). Taken with ta Tak FSQ 106 and QSI683 and 3nm Astrodon filters. Approximately 30 hours total integration time, about half in Ha, and 8 hours each of SII and OIII.

A few galaxies are visible in the bottom right – if it weren’t for the annotation (done in PixInsight), it would be easy to miss them:

Resolution ........ 2.103 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 22.084 deg
Focal ............. 529.56 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 3d 27' 38.0" x 1d 23' 2.8"
Image center ...... RA: 04 01 06.716 Dec: +36 18 56.70