Scope: Megrez II f/4.1 Location: Dos Picos Park, Ramona, CA 6 Nov. 2004 Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 16 x 10 sec and 16 x 32 sec Luminance Exposure with IR Block filter. 6 x300 sec H-Alpha Exposure 12 x 30 sec RGB Exposures
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 Nebulosity was extracted from HA and then combined with the 32 sec IR for Luminance in Photoshop - The 10 sec IR was used to minimize some star bloating. HA extracted nebula was mixed slightly into the Red channel (combine - lighten) to improve nebula color. Luminance and Color FITS were combined in Photoshop with Luminance Layering. Color balancing and final touches in Photoshop. SGBNR (PixInsight LE) was used to smooth background noise on Luminance channel as well as the final result. Image was resized to 800 x 600.
This image was taken at a semi-dark site. HA exposure helped to get some nebula detail in spite of any light pollution. This was a guided image. The image features the star cluster Collinder 33 to the left in the image and IC1848 - the brightest part of the emission nebula upper portion of the image. North is up. Horizontal FOV is 32'