Scope: Megrez II
f/2.6; Location: Blair Valley, Anza Borrego Desert CA; 5
Feb. 2005; Camera: ToUcam SC3
Exposure: 16 x 36 sec and 16 x 16 sec Luminance exposures with Baader IR Block
Filter; 16 x 16 sec R,G,B
Processing: All exposures captured in K3CCDTools 2. Alignment and stacking was done with Registax
3 and saved as FITs. LRGB channels were co-registered in IRIS. Luminance and Color channels were scaled and rough color balanced in
IRIS. The shorter luminance exposure was used to reduce star size on the
brighter stars in the main 36 sec exposure to complete the luminance
construction. Final LRGB combine was done in Photoshop using Luminance Layering (or LLRGB). Color
balancing and final touches were done in Photoshop. SGBNR (PixInsight LE) was used to smooth background noise on the
final result. Resized to approximately 800x600.
This image was a guided exposure. In this image NGC 2451 loose open cluster with
a bright magnitude 3.62 red giant (SAO 198398) near the center. It is located in the constellation of
Puppis . Horizontal FOV is about 80'.
Equatorial 2000: RA: 07h 45m 24s Dec: -37°58'00"