Scope: C8 f/5; Location:
Laguna Mountains, CA; 14 Aug . 2004; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 10 x 120 sec and 12 x 40 sec Luminance exposures with Baader 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.
Shorter Luminance exposure was normal combined in Photoshop with mask to the
longer one to desaturate the bright central part of the nebula. 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 final result. Image was resized to 800 x 600.
This image was taken with fairly good conditions at a dark site. This is a guided image.
North is to the Left. The dark site conditions allowed me to do
this image without any Narrow band filter (H-Alpha). Also, the dark conditions
allowed long exposures and star depth to Magnitude 19 can be seen. Horizontal FOV is about
16'