Scope: Megrez
II f/4.1; Location: Del Mar CA; 23 Oct. 2004; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 16 x 18 sec and 16 x 6 sec Luminance exposures with Baader IR Block Filter;
13 x 12 sec RGB
Processing: All exposures captured in K3CCDTools. Alignment and stacking was done with Registax and saved as FITs. LRGB channels were co-registered in
Astroart. Luminance and Color channels were scaled and rough color balanced in
Astroart. The shorter Luminance exposure was combined with the longer one
to reduce star bloat in the Luminance construction. Final LRGB combine was done in Photoshop using Luminance Layering (or LLRGB). Color
balancing and final touches were done in Photoshop. SGBNR (PixInsight LE) was used to smooth background noise on the luminance channel. Resized to approximately 800x600.
This image was an unguided exposure. In this image M35 is the loose cluster of
mostly blue stars upper Left; NGC 2158 is the cluster seen in the lower Right.
This is an image of Near and Far; Young and Old. M35 is about 2800 light
years away while NGC 2158 is 4 times that distance. M35 is a young blue star
cluster whereas NGC 2158 is about 10 times older with mostly older red stars.
Horizontal FOV is about
50'.
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