CLICK ON IMAGE FOR FULL SIZE VIEW
Scope: C8 f/8, Location: Dos Picos Park, Ramona, CA 21 January 2006 Camera: Artemis285
Exposure: 8 x 480 sec Luminance exposures with IR block, 8 x 120 sec (2x2 bin) RGB exposures.
Processing: Images were captured in Artemis Capture (as FITs). Aligned/stacked in Registax 3 and saved as FITS. Luminance and Color channels were scaled and rough color balanced in Astroart. Channels were co-registered in Astroart. Curves and Levels applied in Photoshop to optimize object features. Final LRGB combine was done in Photoshop using Luminance Layering (or LLRGB). Selective sharpening with layer mask was applied to galaxy dust lanes. Color balancing and final touches were done in Photoshop. SGBNR was used to smooth background noise on the luminance construction as well as the final result. Final Image size is approximately 1392x1040.
North is to the left in this image. The image was guided for all exposures. Galaxy NGC2903 is about 20 million light years distant from Earth. This image replaces an earlier image that can be seen in the Archives here. Horizontal FOV is 20'
Image center is approximately - Equatorial 2000: RA: 09h 32m 10s Dec: +21°30'03"