IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia (ShepBook)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: IC 59 · IC 63 · LBN 620 · LBN 622 · LBN 623 · LBN 625 · Sh2-185 · gamma Cas nebula

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IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia

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IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia

For October, I participated in the Reddit OOTM. Since it's a "ghost" and Halloween themed, I went with an orange shift to the overwhelmingly Ha region of IC 63.

At its core, this is an HSS palette. The usual calibrating, correcting, registering, integration, and deconvolution was done using PixInsight. The interesting work came after all that.

To accomplish a "pumpkin orange", I took the RGB code for the orange I wanted, rgb(204,66,10), and used PixelMath in PixInsight to mix the Ha region across the RGB layers. First, I took each of those RGB values, and used the equation `(value/255)*100`. I rounded each value up and used that as a multiplier in PixelMath for adding some Ha to each of the channels. For the green and blue channels, I then "filled" the rest to make the total equal a 1.0 multiplier. This provided me with a PixelMath equation that looked like:

```// R:
Ha*0.8
// G:
(SII*0.74)+(Ha*0.26)
// B:
(SII*0.96)+(Ha*0.04)
```

I then used the Ha layer as a luminance layer, using PixInsight's LRGBCombination tool, only adding the Ha layer to the L channel, and mixing the channel weights, transfer functions, and chrominance noise reduction until I was happy with the color, brightness, and highlights. PixInsight's SCNR tool took care of any green shift that found its way into the stars.

As a final step, I used Topaz DeNoise AI to touch up the noise added by deconvolution and drizzle. This also helped with the color noise not caught by LRGBCombination's chrominance noise reduction.

The final image was exported for web using Photoshop, as it does a great job at providing a smaller file size while still maintaining good quality in a PNG.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5152775
PixInsight job	4O1HICEA7BTNLPDHT2KNTADRX0RSXQH7
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h58m40s.914
RA (top/left)	01h01m17s.573
RA (top/right)	00h54m37s.304
RA (bottom/right)	00h56m00s.135
RA (bottom/left)	01h02m46s.794

Dec (center)	+61°05′02″.67
Dec (top/left)	+60°40′48″.66
Dec (top/right)	+60°56′06″.76
Dec (bottom/right)	+61°29′10″.50
Dec (bottom/left)	+61°13′31″.90

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IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia

IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia

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Image Index:

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IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia

IC 63 - Ghost of Cassiopeia

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