AstroBin - ngc7000 and ic5070 again again (north america and pelican nebulae) 4h52m (pfile)

ngc7000 and ic5070 again again (north america and pelican nebulae) 4h52m

Contains: , , ,

Imaging telescopes or lenses: CANON 200 f/2.8, Canon 200mm f/2.8

Imaging cameras: Canon EOS 50D

Mounts: Orion SkyView Pro EQ

Guiding telescopes or lenses: Orion Finderscope 9x50

Guiding cameras: Meade DSI

Software: BinaryRivers BackyardEOS, PixInsight, PHD guiding

Filters: Astronomik CLS CCD Filter

Dates: Sept. 4, 2011

Frames: 76x240"

Integration: 5.1 hours

Avg. Moon age: 6.60 days

Avg. Moon phase: 41.75%

RA center: 20:56:10.188

DEC center: +43:50:19.311

Orientation: -179.15 degrees

Field width: 4.31 degrees

Field height: 6.26 degrees

2011 version redux

it cleared up for one night (sept 1-2) so i was able to get a few more hours in.

this is 76x4min (4h52m). in addition, i used HDRComposition to merge in 1/10s, 1/4s, 2s, 5s, 10s and 60s exposures to try to recover the brighter stars a little bit. not sure if i was successful.

comparing this (and the prior) to my 2010 version, it's clear that ISO1600 is where i should have been all along. i can't say if it's due to the ISO or the fact that i can now turn dithering on (since i'm using BackyardEOS now), there is absolutely no banding or pattern noise in the integrated result.

canon 50d with astrodon L filter modified by hap griffin.
canon 200L @ f/4
CLS filter
ISO1600
captured with backyardEOS
guiding with PhD (dithering on)

calibration, registration and stacking with PixInsight 1.7.

processing with Pixinsight 1.7:
- integration of 240s, 60s, etc. exposures
- HDR merge of all exposure lengths
- DBE
- extraction and re-registration of RGB channels
- DynamicPSF to get each channel's PSF
- deconvolution (100 iterations) on each channel separately, with star mask for local deringing support and luminance mask to protect low SNR regions
- RGB combine
- ColorCalibration
- histogram transformations and curves
- ACDNR
- histogram transformations on just the stars
- morphological transformation (selection, 20% amount 20%, 7 iterations) on just the stars
- SCNR (blue, green)