The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. 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).

The California Nebula was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884.

Imaging telescopes or lenses: William Optics Star 71 Astrograph
Imaging cameras: ATIK 383L+ mono, Canon 1100D modded
Mounts: SW HEQ 5 Pro SynScan
Software: Pixinsight PixInsinght 1.8 RC7
Filters: Baader Ha 1.25″ Filter 7nm, Astronomik Clip CLS
Resolution: 1500×948
Dates: Oct. 5, 2014
Integration: 0.0 hours
Avg. Moon age: 10.86 days
Avg. Moon phase: 83.71%
RA center: 60.398 degrees
DEC center: 36.285 degrees
Pixel scale: 6.396 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: -179.091 degrees
Field radius: 1.577 degrees

Аuthor: Lensman57, 07.10.2014

AstroPhotography of the day of SPONLI