Scope: C8 f/5; Location: Del Mar, CA;
11 June 2004; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 16 x 15 sec and 12 x 60 sec Luminance exposures with IR Block Filter and Orion Skyglo
filter; 12 x 15 sec RGB and one set 8 x 22 sec Blue exposure.
Processing: Images were captured in K3CCDTools. Aligned/stacked in Registax and saved as FITS. Luminance and Color channels were scaled and rough color balanced in Astroart. Channels were co-registered in
Astroart. Shorter Luminance exposure was normal combined with core mask to
desaturate and sharpen the core in the Luminance channel. Luminance and Color FITS were combined in Photoshop with Luminance Layering. Color balancing and final touches in Photoshop. SGBNR was used to smooth background noise on the luminance channel and the final result. Resized to approximately 800x600.
This image was a guided image. Image was taken under fairly heavy light pollution.
Since I was somewhat low on the horizon, I took a longer exposure on blue and
combined it with the blue channel to boost the blue a little. I believe I would
have been overly Red in this image without this adjustment. I have not imaged this cluster prior to this image.
Horizontal FOV is about 16'
|