Nicola Beltraminelli captured this striking image of the Pacman Nebula (NGC281) using his SVX180T. This emission nebula, located in the constellation Cassiopeia is nearly 10,000 lightyears away and 48 lightyears in diameter. Included within its expanse is open star cluster IC 1590, which gives the dust in this nebula its impressive glow. 

According to Nicola, "I was fascinated by this beautiful nebula since quite long time and generated a first version 3 years ago with my previous RASA scope (not published). Although the result was reasonably well defined, I was frustrated by the limited focal length of the scope (620mm), thus I decided to wait to receive my super-refractor of 180mm (1280mm focal length) before to publish it. My objective was to generate a highly resolved version of the nebula by keeping smooth color transitions, not too saturated and sharp contrasts. I thus shooted the nebula during 15 nights. As the SII emission is particularly dense of fantastic structures, I generated many subs to maximize its sharpness, thus enabling me to better highlight the color transitions. For the Ha subs, I only selected the sharpest ones. During the processing I immediately noticed that I had a lot of signal, thus requiring only a very minimal denoising (020). the starting sharpness of the Ha layer was actually quite high and the use of BXT almost insignificantly contributed to the end result."

Update: On 9/27/23 this image was awarded "Top Picture" on Astrobin. Get an in depth look and learn more about it by clicking the link below:

https://www.astrobin.com/ochjo8/B/

Words from Nicola, about this image and the accolade it has received: "It confirms that the scope enables generating images of a quality among the best scopes in the market.