Scope: C8 f/2.8; Location:
Laguna Mountains, CA; 10 Jul. 2004; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 12 x 80 sec and 12 x 24 sec Luminance exposures with Baader IR Block Filter;
10 x 48 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.
Shorter Luminance exposure was normal combined in Photoshop with mask to the
longer one to reduce star bloat. 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.
This image was taken with fairly good conditions at a dark site. This is a guided image.
This is the so called Crescent Nebula. The dark site conditions allowed me to do
this image without any Narrow band filter (H-Alpha). As a result, the color has more
variation in the red tones. In final touches with Photoshop, I tried some mild
minimum filtering on the nebula regions- this helped to enhance the detail
somewhat. Horizontal FOV is 31'