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This off the beaten path
            object in Perseus is nothing more than a wisp visually, even
            with large amateur telescopes. My friend Steve Coe's observations
            indicated that there seemed to be a dark area near the core,
            but little more. It is plotted innocently on the Megastar Atlas
            as one of the very few reflection nebulas in this region of any
            size. Very tempting. Little did I know at the time that this
            tenuous wisp would pan out to be a splendid object, displaying
            a pale blue haze around a bright central star, dark lanes cutting
            through it, with an outer very light blue and magenta haze of
            dim stellar reflection. This was the single longest shooting
            sequence I can do in one night on one object - 4 hours. Thats
            just over the trees in the east, to hitting the tube against
            the concrete pier near the end.

            
Details:

            
The central star
            is 9.4 magnitude SAO56726, and is a very hot spectral class of
            A2IIev comp. This high output star lights the nebula and is central
            in this image. The nebula itself is listed as 9 arc minutes,
            however its extended envelope makes it much larger photographically.
            Finally, the bright orange star at the bottom is 10.6 magnitude
            and of a late spectral class K or M.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Mount:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG 10XME NABG with Enhanced Water Cooling
Guider: Meade DSI Pro  w/Lumicon Newt Easy Guider
Exposure:  RGB = 4h total
AstroDon RGB Combine Ratio:  1: 1.05: 1.2
Location:  Payson, Arizona, Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 5 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 9/10
Outside Temperature:  35 F
CCD Temperature:  -30 C
Image Processing Tools: 
Maxim DL:  Calibration, deblooming (Starizona Debloomer), aligning, stacking
PixInsight:  Curves, Deconvolution
Photoshop CS2:  Curves, Color Correction, Gradient removal (Grad Xterminator), Cleanup

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