Pac man nebula - Comparison with old images

[Skywatcher]

Well last night was my first chance for some deep sky stuff for absolutely ages and the Pac man was flying high in the sky

The trick to decent images is collecting loads of extra data and that means longer and more exposures, last year I took this which was 10 3 minute subframes at ISO 1600 (noisy)

you can tell its pac man shaped if nothing else



Last night I set up early as it was dark by gone 8 and took 4 hours worth of 8 minute subframes at ISO 800 then left the scope taking 4 hours of dark frames ( to remove the noise in the background)

(looks better if you click to make it big) - I like the star colours the old red giant stars and the young hot blue ones


Close up and processed


Hope you can see the difference between the years

Oh an cos Mick keeps asking this is what 1 of the pics looks like straight out of the camera pre stacking and pre subtraction of darks and offsets and pre processing