M1 Crab Nebula (galactic_surfer)

M1 Crab Nebula

While dealing with cloudy skies, I decided to evaluate the Telescope Live service and downloaded raw images captured by their Planewave CDK24 61-cm telescope in Rio Hurtado Valley, Chile. These multi-night images were already calibrated against master bias, dark, and flat frames. However, they still contained defects such as hot pixels and satellite trails, so dialing in the proper parameters for cosmetic correction and pixel rejection during image integration was important. If you want to invest in the extra effort, you can download the raw calibration frames as well but interestingly many of the flats are from different nights, sometimes weeks apart.

Image processing was conducted in PixInsight and Photoshop. Highlights included:
- Channel combination: SII (red), H-alpha (green), OIII (blue)
- StarXTerminator was used to create multiple star-less and star-only images
- Telescope Live did not have any RGB captures of M1, so I read up on various techniques that others have used to create a synthetic RGB star background. Ended up using PixelMath to combine the various star-only narrowband images based on this formula: R/K: Ha, G: OIII*0.8+Ha*0.2, B: OIII
- Topaz DeNoise AI was used to clean up noise and sharpen the image

Source data was from 2021 (Jan 12, Feb 8, Mar 1-2, Mar 6-8). Each exposure was 300 seconds, 1x binning, and filtered by Astrodon 3mm NB filters. About 3.5 hours total.

An overall thumb's up to Telescope Live. The usability of the Website is excellent, tutorials are great, and clearly, their data archive will grow over time. It's a nice option for refining your image processing skills.

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Reprocessed entirely in PixInsight this time. Brightened up the background a bit. Tweaked the color palette, aiming for a result closer to the Hubble version (https://esahubble.org/images/heic0515a/).

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7156401
PixInsight job	8Q12XFPD6DNQ9M6J75EBQ8D5WLGYR3GR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h34m33s.633
RA (top/left)	05h35m30s.480
RA (top/right)	05h33m38s.449
RA (bottom/right)	05h33m37s.346
RA (bottom/left)	05h35m28s.606

Dec (center)	+22°00′41″.96
Dec (top/left)	+22°13′27″.44
Dec (top/right)	+22°13′45″.28
Dec (bottom/right)	+21°47′54″.82
Dec (bottom/left)	+21°47′36″.49

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M1 Crab Nebula

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M1 Crab Nebula

M1 Crab Nebula

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