The Packman Nebula (NGC 281) is one of the wonders of Cassiopeia. It’s an emission nebula that is about 9,500 light years away and it still managed to cover an area slightly larger than the full moon so this is a very large region of gas.

I did a broadband version of this with a different telescope though the same model of camera resulting in a slightly coarser image scale (shown below). My processing technique has improved since the earlier version but even so it’s interesting to make the comparison between the broadband and narrowband versions.

The narrowband version shows more detail and structure and it was possible to control the stars int he narrowband version a bit more (though I might be able to do something about that were I to reprocess it today).

The narrowband version has more integration time (36.5 hours 12 hours) but it’s the narrowband filters that really make the difference for showing details.

The new version is presented in the SHO (Hubble) palette.

For all the technical details see astrobin.