Had a hard time finding Sculptor this night. There was too much smoke and it was too low on the horizon so I couldn't find any nearby stars to use with the Telrad easily. Finally had to put an eyepiece in and hunt for it visually. Once I found it, it showed up easily on the guide camera and the main camera with just a couple of seconds' exposure. Chiller not functional, but camera at 13 °C. Medium dither, settling at 0.4.
In the revision, I used layer masking to enhance the dust lanes. This makes the image a little noisier, but I think I like it better.
In the second revision, I used StarTools HDR
ptimize, Deconvolution, Magic:Shrink, Life:Moderate, followed by a little layer mask to denoise the background in CS6.
Date: 17 Sep 2012
Subject: NGC 253, Sculptor Galaxy
Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector
Filter: None
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)
Guiding: Orion ST80 + DSI Ic + PHD
Camera: DSI IIc,
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.1, medium RA-only dither
Exposure: 13 x 300 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.25 SD stack
Processing: Digital development with weak sharpening, Keller stretch middle of histogram, power stretch, star reduction, saturation boost, GreyCStoration in Neb 3; Selected green color range, created an adjustment layer, desaturated a couple of times. AT local contrast enhance, then less crunchy more fuzzy.
Comments