Scope: C8 f/5; Location: Dos Picos Park - Ramona, CA; 8 May. 2004; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 20 x 40 sec and 16 x 13 sec Luminance exposures with IR Block Filter; 10 x 40 sec RGB
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 shorter Luminance exposure was normal combined with a bright star mask to reduce bloating on the brighter stars 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. North is up. This image replaces an earlier image that can be seen
below. Horizontal FOV is about 16'
Scope: Starmax 127 f/6 Location: Ramona CA 5/30/2003 Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 10 x 90 sec with IR block filter and 12 x 30 sec each RGB
Processing: Captured aligned and stacked in K3CCDTools with L,R,G,B saved as FITs. LRGB masters were registered and combined in Astroart. Some Lowpass filtering was applied followed by un-sharp mask on the Luminance frame. LRGB result was saved as a BMP. The result BMP was level adjusted for smoother background in Photoshop
This image was taken in Dos Picos park in Ramona since coastal Del Mar where I live was socked in with a marine layer. Transparency was still not very good inland at Ramona, but I took these exposures before the haze took over the whole sky. I had a very narrow imaging time window, but I got lucky and got a reasonable image. If you compare many of my images, you will notice I struggle a lot with Galaxies compared to Nebulas and Clusters - more practice needed. Horizontal FOV is 55'