A better than I'd expected M13 (Dan Kordella)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Hercules (Her) · Contains: Hercules Globular Cluster · M 13 · NGC 6205 · NGC 6207

A better than I'd expected M13, Dan Kordella

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A better than I'd expected M13

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A better than I'd expected M13

Globular cluster Messier 13.

This was really just a test of my recently acquired TS Photoline 6" Newt and the hack-job I did putting a Moonlite Focuser on it. I'm generally unfamiliar with using Newtonians - especially for imaging - so I didn't worry about phase of the moon, light pollution, etc.: just wanted to see if I could focusing running, check how it holds collimation, all that stuff.

Amazingly, the biggest problems with the image where not "Newtonian" problems, but dust/smudges and other crap on my filters or camera sensor window that flats were NOT able to correct. There was considerable vignetting which, again, flats could not correct very well, but use of DBE in Pixinsight was able to (mostly) manage in addition to some cropping.

The smudges/dust issues that did not calibrate out left rainbow-like distortion patterns in the final combined image. I dealt with these by using Starnet2 to remove the stars, clonestamp tool on the background, and then recombined the starmask with the starless background. There's still some problems around cluster's outer halo that I couldn't fix, but I want to re-image this target anyway.

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Description: Did some additional cleanup of background, popped saturation a bit more, tweaked contrast

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Astrometry.net job	5771105
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