Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cancer (Cnc)  ·  Contains:  13.44  ·  466 Tisiphone  ·  M 67  ·  NGC 2682
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M67, LRGB, 30-31 Jan 2019, David Dearden
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M67, LRGB, 30-31 Jan 2019

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M67, LRGB, 30-31 Jan 2019, David Dearden
Powered byPixInsight

M67, LRGB, 30-31 Jan 2019

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Open clusters are not usually my targets, but I wanted something to image after my primary target had set and this just looked like a good collection of stars. I thought it might have a lot of color, but was interested to see a lot of red and yellow and not much blue. After looking M67 up on Wikipedia, I learned this is relatively old for an open cluster; usually gravitational forces cause them to disperse, but M67 is thought to have been around 3-4 billion years. Hence, there aren’t many short-lived blue stars but there are sun-like yellow dwarves, white dwarves, and red giants. The sun was probably born in a cluster like this. I’ve still got some optical error that makes my stars out-of-round, and did not try to fix that.

Date: 30, 31 Jan 2019

Subject: M67

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific Coma Corrector

Filters: ZWO 31 mm diameter unmounted 7 nm L, R, G, B

Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD 2.000j)+PEC

Guiding: Orion Thin Off-axis Guider + DSI IIc +PHD 2.6.5dev6 (Win 10 ASCOM)

Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool, -20 °C, Gain 139 Offset 21

Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 3.0.3.151

Exposure: 25x180 L, 27x120 R, 30x120 G, & 30x120 B

Stacking: Deep Sky Stacker 4.1.1 (64-bit) dark+flat (no bias), κ-σ stacking with κ = 1.5.

Processing: StarTools 1.4.332: Did LRGB combination in StarTools with “cap green” on, then software binned 2x2. Vignette wiped. Stretched and HDR optimized. Used the color module and boosted saturation a bit. Deconvoluted and untrack denoised. Used Photoshop to adjust levels, Carboni’s Astronomy Tools to increase star color and decrease star size, followed with “less crunchy more fuzzy.” AstroFrame.

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M67, LRGB, 30-31 Jan 2019, David Dearden