Messier 53 - Globular Cluster in Coma Berenices (Mike Jaworski)

Messier 53 - Globular Cluster in Coma Berenices

Here is an attempt at the globular cluster M53 located in Coma Berenices. I was working with my mount and trying to get everything all set. Things weren't going so well and I finally decided to just find something relatively easy as a subject with the remaining time for my night. This is what I got!

A technical comment up front is that I'm still sorting out my exposure settings. I was working 4 minute subs on this go which turns out, I was saturating the camera at ISO800. So, my color detail is not as good as it could be. That said, there is some nice color still in the image. During processing with StarTools, I also noticed that my color correction was not nearly as bad as some other DSOs I've worked. I'm not sure if this was just a symptom of it being an easy target and there being a nice B-V 0.63 target readily available or what - but it was pretty painless.

I love globular clusters. The first DSO I ever found in an eyepiece was M13. It's amazing to think that they are just large, self-gravitating balls of stars orbiting our galaxy. The light from this one started its journey about 58,000 years ago. Archeologists and anthropologists think that somewhere in this time period, humans were transitioning to the bow-and-arrow instead of the spear. Other scientists think that this is about the time that our ancestors and neanderthals were still "getting it on". Either way, there's a lot of time for those photons leaving their stars and winding up in my camera.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_prehistory

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/oldest-human-genome-reveals-when-our-ancestors-had-sex-neandertals

Thanks for looking!

Original
B
C
D
Final
E

B

Description: Pulled up the saturation to see if there's more color in the DSO. There is. The saturation was done in GIMP as post. I'll probably redo the whole processing in StarTools eventually, but this is better for now.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: Reprocessed in ST + a slight saturation increase in GIMP. Very slight in GIMP this time vs. B. I had originally drizzled 2x in DSS which artificially increased the resolution, but in this version I binned back down. This helped increase the data quality massively, so it was easier to stretch. In general, I was more aggressive on this one.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Took the version C output from ST and did a bit more with it in GIMP. I desaturated the "black" regions to remove the red cast. This worked better than simply adjusting the black-point up, in my opinion. Doing the black point only makes the noise turn all patchy and obvious. Here the noise is more homogeneous and subtle (and now more gray).

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: Performed some additional noise reduction in GIMP for this image. Noise Reduction done via flood-fill method in dark regions and then a star-mask is applied and blur filtering is used in dark regions. Once the black regions are leveled out a bit more, the black point can be raised improving contrast without creating such a "blotchy" pattern all over the place.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1575854
PixInsight job	JI4PE6CV36SFRMWS7TOJDFDSF97E17KY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h12m52s.27
RA (top/left)	13h12m13s.20
RA (top/right)	13h16m55s.47
RA (bottom/right)	13h13m33s.00
RA (bottom/left)	13h08m51s.33

Dec (center)	+18°12′33″.8
Dec (top/left)	+17°15′02″.0
Dec (top/right)	+18°21′35″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+19°09′49″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	+18°03′15″.1

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