NGC1499 “California Nebula”
May 17, 2020
The NGC1499 nebula is a mosaic of 2 Ha images of 14 and 13 frames of 1800 sec of exposition time for a total of 13 hr 30m with the FSQ telescope and the QHY90A CCD, taken in November 2016.
The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus, discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the Hβ line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star, Xi Persei (also known as Menkib, seen at center below it in the inset at right).
By coincidence, the California Nebula transits in the zenith in central California as the latitude matches the declination of the object. (Wikipedia)
