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Scope: ST80 f/2.5 Location: Laguna Mountains CA 9/20/2003 Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 12 x 4 sec, 12 x 12 sec, 8 x 36 sec Luminance exposures with IR Block filter,12 x 18 sec RGB exposures for each of four quadrant frames
Processing: Each quadrant set (Luminance and RGB) was captured and aligned in K3CCDTools and saved as FITS. Luminance and Color master frames were coregistered in Astroart with some low pass filtering. Luminance and Color FITS were combined in Photoshop with some Luminance Layering. The multiple Luminance exposures were combined to de-saturate the galaxy core. Each finished quadrant was color matched in Photoshop and Mosaic combine in Photoshop. I enhanced the blue a little on the galaxy arms to contrast with foreground stars. Loreal and SGBNR were used for image enhancement.
This image is a four frame mosaic with the central core placed in each corner of four frames. Core de-saturation was somewhat successful with the different Luminance exposures. I did use the Celestron AS mount with the C8 scope guiding and the ST80 imaging. M32 and M110 are also seen in this image. Approximate total horizontal FOV is 140'