Scope: C8 f/2.8 Location: Blair Valley, Anza Borrego Desert, CA 12 Nov. 2004 Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 16 x 20 sec and 16 x 60 sec Luminance exposures with IR Block filter. 15 x 30 sec RGB Exposures
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. The 20 sec IR was used to minimize some star bloating and core saturation in the 60 second exposure for the Luminance construction. Luminance and Color FITS were combined in Photoshop with Luminance Layering. Color balancing and final touches in Photoshop. SGBNR (PixInsight LE) was used to smooth background noise on Luminance channel. Image was resized to 800 x 600.
This image was taken at a dark site with very little light pollution. This was a guided image. The lowest right of center spot of nebulosity is the McNeil Nebula discovered in January of 2004 by Astronomer Jay McNeil. He discovered that this previously dark or dim spot had brightened considerably. Horizontal FOV is 30'