NGC 2818 is a planetary nebula in the Pyxis constellation. The nebula is made up of glowing gasses from the central star’s outer layers that were ejected when it ran out of fuel to continue its fusion process.  The nebula is about 4 light-years across and is about 10,000 light-years from us.

A planetary nebula forms as part of a main-sequence star’s lifetime if the star is between one and eight solar masses. I discuss main sequence stars and why they’re important to our understanding of what’s happening in space in my forthcoming book.

Acquisition and Processing

I acquired this image using iTelescope.net’s T32, a Planewave CDK 431mm telescope. I took the following exposures:

  • Luminance: 1 x 60 sec, binned 1×1
  • Red: 1 x 300 sec, binned 1×1
  • Green: 1 x 180 sec, binned 1×1
  • Blue: 1 x 180 sec, binned 1×1

The total exposure time was 6 minutes.

I processed this image using PixInsight; I also used Photoshop to crop the image to the area of interest and resized it.