The Pacman Nebula Multiwavelength

The Pacman Nebula, NGC 281, is an emission nebula located in the Cassiopeia constellation some 9,500 light-years away from Earth. It’s surrounded by clouds of gas and dust that can be detected by the use of different broadband and narrowband filters.

I started capturing data for this project back in September 2024 and finished the acquisition this January 2025. The resulting image aims to compare the view that you can get depending on the filters you use and how deep you gather the data. The final mosaic shows the three resulting images in one single frame: LRGB (broadband), HLRGB (broadband + hydrogen emissions), SHOLRGB (broadband + sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen emissions). Total exposures have been rounded off in order to simplify its interpretation.

Image processing took several days until I got the desired result. Tiny galaxies can be seen all over the field of view thanks to the nearly 50 hours of data captured with the Luminance filter together with the 14 hours of R,G,B broadband color data, captured both under almost perfect dark nights during the last 4 months. The dusty IFN clouds also drive our sight to the reflection nebula LDN 1299, measuring 10 arcminutes across.

More than 120 hours of narrowband data have been used to compose the final image. To compose the narrowband color image I used the Foraxx Palette color mapping. Both the broadband and narrowband images have been melted in an individual final 184h exposure image that shows all the emissions surrounding this popular nebula.

The full image covers an area of 2º 26′ x 1º 41′ at a resolution of 1.46″/pixel.

SGP, PHD2, APP, PIX, TPZ, PS.