Christmas Tree Cluster NGC2264
Archives


 

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR FULL SIZE VIEW

Scope: C8 at f/3 Location: Blair Valley, Anza Borrego Desert, CA,  12/21/2003 Camera: ToUcam SC3

Exposure: 4 x 180 sec H-Alpha exposure. 10 x 60 sec exposures with IR Block filter.10 x 20 sec each RGB exposures. Four Frame Mosaic

Processing: Captured and stacked in K3CCDTools with HA, IR,,R,G,B saved as FITs. HA, IR,RGB masters were registered in Astroart. Some Lowpass filtering was applied on the HA and IR channels. HA and IR were combined for Luminance. A small portion of the HA channel was mixed with Red for the final red channel. These combinations and LRGB combine were done in Photoshop. Luminance Layering was used. Each quadrant of the mosaic was color balanced in Photoshop and background smoothed with SGBNR... Final mosaic joining and touch up in Photoshop.

This image was taken in fairly dark skies. The Cone Nebula structure is visible as well as that of the reflection portion of NGC2264. The Fox Fur structure and much of the tree structure is not visible, but I felt the image was still pleasing. This object needs a dark sky and probably about 3 times the exposures I gave it. In hindsight, I would not mosaic this object but instead image with the ST80 at f/2.5 with these longer exposures – I believe the results would be better. Horizontal FOV is about 50'

 

Home ] Galaxies ] Nebulas ] Globular Clusters ] OpenClusters ] Moon and Planets ]

All images and content remain the property of Jim Thommes - copyright 2003, 2007

Current Web Total Hits -

- Unique Visitors