Astrophotography by Keith B. Quattrocchi


NGC 6543: The Cat's Eye Nebula
Complex Planetary Nebula in Draco
Ha/SII/OIII Image 

Copyright 2022
Keith B Quattrocchi and Bray Falls

Image Acquisition Information  
                    
Telescope: 16" RCOS Richey Chretien Telescope (ion milled at f/9) 
Camera: ZWO Full Frame Back Illuminated CMOS ASI 6200 MM
Guiding: Starlight Xpress AO with UltraStar Autoguiding Camera (AO control using maxim DL software).
Filters: Astrodon LRBG, H-alpha, S-II and OIII Filters
Acquisition Programs: NINA, The SkyX, PHD2, PWI4
Processing Programs: PixInsight, RC Astro, CCDStack, Photoshop CS4
Date: Data processed on July 15, 2022.  Data acquisition: June of 2022                            
Time:  8 hours (10 minute exposures) for each of Ha/SII/OIII for a total of 24 hours.    Starfield LRGB images also taken.               
              
Image Information:  NGC 6543 is the Cat's Eye Nebula, a complex planetary nebula in the constellation Draco about 3,000 to 3,300 light-years away. It is formed by a dying star shedding its outer layers, and its intricate, highly detailed structure of concentric rings, shells, and knots was revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also known as Caldwell 6 and has an apparent magnitude of 8.2, making it visible with a small telescope from the Northern Hemisphere during summer months.  
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Processing Information  This Ha/SII/OIII images were obtained using  AstroDon filters.  The narrow band images were batch processed (calibrated, registered, normalized and integrated) in PixInsignt.   Further stretching, high pass filtering and background smoothing was performed with Adobe Photoshop CS/4 and PixInsight.
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