The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus, It’s so named because the full nebula appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs.
The California Nebula was discovered by Edward Barnard in 1884 and is located about 1,500 light years away in the same Orion arm of the Milky Way that contains our Solar System.
The full nebula itself is about 100 light years long and covers approximately 4 degrees by 1 degree in the sky (about 8 Full Moons by 2 Full Moons).
The complete nebula is shown as follows:
Equipment:
- Vixen AX103S 103mm f/8.0 ED Apochromatic Refractor telescope.
- Avalon Linear Fast Reverse Mount.
- QSI 683 CCD camera, Kodak KAF-8300 8.3 mega-pixel sensor cooled to -25 °C.
- Astronomik L-RGB, Astrodon 5nm Ha and Astrodon 3nm Oiii filters.
Image exposure (6+ hours in total):
- 20 x 20min Ha.
