Scope: ST80 f/2.5, Location: Dos Picos Park, Ramona, CA; 6 Aug. 2004, Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 12 x 10 sec and 16 x 5 sec Luminance with IR block filter, 12 x 4 sec each RGB filter.
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 shorter Luminance exposure was combined with mask with the longer Luminance exposure 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. Image was resized to 800 x 600.
This image was an unguided image. This image is a wide field image of a Southern Open Cluster sometimes called Ptolemy's Cluster. North is up. You can also see the Globular Cluster NGC6453 as a golden smudge in the upper right. A closer image of M7 itself is shown in the image below. Horizontal FOV is about 80'
Scope: ST80 f/5, Location: Del Mar CA; 5 Aug. 2004 , Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 24 x 5 sec Luminance with IR block filter and 18 x 20 sec and 18 x 7 sec with IR block and Orion Skyglo filter, 18 x 5,5,6 sec each RGB filter.
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. The 5 sec IR and 7 sec Skyglo exposure were combines for optimum star appearance, the 20 sec Skyglo exposure was not used. Channels were co-registered in Astroart. Luminance and Color FITS were combined in Photoshop with Luminance Layering. Color balancing and final touches in Photoshop. Image was resized to 800 x 600.
This image was an unguided image. The overall field is about half of the above image. It is interesting to see the faint Milky Way background in both of these images. Horizontal FOV is about 40'