M1, Crab Nebula, 19 Dec 2012 (David Dearden)

M1, Crab Nebula, 19 Dec 2012

Found M1 pretty easily as there's a star to put the Telrad on. Some high clouds are interfering. M1 is visible at 5 s in the guide scope (but I can easily see it at 1.5 s in PHD). CCD is at -7 °C with no chiller (it's plenty cold enough tonight). Started with the meridian already flipped. I had a terrible time getting any color to show in this.

In the B revision I did not auto color balance in Nebulosity, but did the stretching first in StarTools and used HDR:Reveal before doing color balance. I desaturated everything but the nebula a bit.

In the C revision I used StarTools' Life:Isolate with a mask to de-emphasize the surrounding stars.

Date: 19 Dec 2012

Subject: M1, Crab Nebula

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector spaced properly

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: Orion ST80 + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.0

Camera: DSI IIc (no chiller, T = -7 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, no dither

Exposure: 38 x 300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, dark subtract, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: Neb 3 crop and saturate. StarTools 1.3 Develop, Deconvolute, Track, Magic:Shrink , Color:Saturate (cap green to yellow), Life:Moderate. CS6 layer with a more highly developed, less colored luminance.

Original
B
Final
C

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