C6 - Cat’s Eye Nebula

The Cat’s Eye Nebula is a new target for me, in addition to employing a new imaging technique. The core of the nebula is incredibly bright, so it required short exposures to reveal any detail, while the outer shell is very dim, which requires much longer exposures. I landed on taking 1000 1-second exposures for the core, much like a planetary imager might do to eliminate the effects of seeing. I stacked the best 750 frames (I probably could have been more selective, but perhaps I can try that on the next go-round. For the outer shell of nebulosity, I used 220 60-second exposures. I probably could have done longer exposures and a dual band filter to really pull out the faint shell (and more integration time!), but from what I had seen on other examples of this target, 60 seconds is usually sufficient, and this was the first clear night for me in over a month. I’m really happy about how well the core of the nebula came out! I may revisit this one in the future to build on this technique.