Scope: C8 f/10; Location:
Dos Picos Park, Ramona CA; 5 June 2004; Del Mar, CA; 10 June 2004; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 12 x 25 sec and 10 x 75 sec Luminance exposures with IR Block Filter and Orion Skyglo
filter; 12 x 32 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.
Shorter Luminance exposure was normal combined with core mask to desaturate and sharpen the core in the Luminance channel.
Channels were co-registered in
Astroart. 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
700x550.
This image was a guided image for both the 5 June and 10 June sessions. It is a
prime focus f/10 image so the exposure times were longer. The guiding was
absolutely critical in this image. As it turned out, the seeing was only fair so
the seeing and long exposure turned the stars a bit soft. The field of view is
small for this rather smallish object at the core. I have not imaged this cluster prior to this image.
Horizontal FOV is about 8'