Abell 85 - CTB 1 - Medulla Nebula (Monty Chandler)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: 9 Cas · HD224403 · HD224669 · HD224892 · HD225160 · LBN 576 · PK116+00.1 · The star 9 Cas

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Abell 85 - CTB 1 - Medulla Nebula

Link: https://montychandler.smugmug.com/Astrophotography/Nebula/i-StrVgvs

Powered byPixInsight

Abell 85 - CTB 1 - Medulla Nebula

Link: https://montychandler.smugmug.com/Astrophotography/Nebula/i-StrVgvs

CTB-1, or Abell 85, is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago.

The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements, near its core, that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas.

Although the Medulla Nebula appears as large as a full moon, it is so faint that it took 32-hours of exposure to create this image.

I first processed this image at 15 hours of exposures taken in September 2022. The surface brightness of this nebula is so low I wasn't sure if I had anything useful. From this result I knew I needed to double my data to improve the structure detail, enhance the surrounding nebulosity, and bring life back to the background.

My efforts are generally to acquire a natural color image, so no pixel math shenanigans have occurred within this image. It's a pure OSC capture. To me the richness of Ha color, presence of significant OIII and SII data without color mapping highlights the strength of the Radian Ultra Quad-band filter.

The basic PixInsight processing workflow was: Image Calibration, Cosmetic Correction, Debayer, Subframe Selection; Star Alignment, Local Normalization, Image Integration, Dynamic Crop, DBE (division), Denoise, Photometric Color Calibration (pcc), Repaired HSV, Histogram Stretch for background, Arcsinstretch to get the stars visible, create starless, Histogram stretch to bring out the nebula, HOO pixelmath, Curves to taste, Local Histogram Equalization, Dark Structure Enhance, A final touch of Curves, replace the stars, sharpen and convert to Jpeg in PS.

Cheers!

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6502937
PixInsight job	PHCCOJKZCM188UCCZHHFEMJPR55ZIZ62
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	23h59m13s.200
RA (top/left)	23h51m16s.996
RA (top/right)	00h02m06s.897
RA (bottom/right)	00h07m08s.547
RA (bottom/left)	23h56m09s.910

Dec (center)	+62°26′11″.91
Dec (top/left)	+62°26′24″.12
Dec (top/right)	+61°35′03″.14
Dec (bottom/right)	+62°24′19″.11
Dec (bottom/left)	+63°17′06″.62

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Abell 85 - CTB 1 - Medulla Nebula

Abell 85 - CTB 1 - Medulla Nebula

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Abell 85 - CTB 1 - Medulla Nebula

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