Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  Extremely wide field
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Even more Cygnus, dkamen
Even more Cygnus
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Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Even more Cygnus, dkamen
Even more Cygnus
Powered byPixInsight

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

I have uploaded partial results from this project in the past and will upload others in the future.

This is 3 summers and 1.5 autumns. 95 panels in total. I must have used over 200 AA batteries. I had to take several sets of flats (about one set every week although the set I took in early August lasted me 50 days) and was never quite happy with my darks, of which I used 1000+ in every variation. By September 2023 (quite late) I realised bias were adequate, not perfect but simply good enough without the problems. On the plus side, I've had to refocus only once between June and November 2023 (go Samyang!).

You see only 2021 and 2023 dates in the acquisition details. That was because the second summer (2022) was spent exploring and framing the field at 35mm (Nikkor DX 35mm f/1.8 @ f/2.2). 

Lots and lots of deep sky objects I didn't know about before.  Some I also targeted with the telescope, out of curiosity (like this one) . There's even a comet in the dark region above and to the right of μ-Cephei.
image.png
It was captured around mid-August so I believe it is C/2023 E1 (Atlas). I only noticed it in the integrations about a couple of weeks ago.

The Nikon suffers from a tilt (having survived a drop in 2019) which renders the rightmost 1/4th of every sub unusable plus some electronic problems. And the Star Adventurer's battery cage has started getting rusty and non-conductive unless you fiddle with the batteries. But I will keep imaging that region.

Processing:
APP:
- Integration, cropping and gradient removal on 95 panels and their associated calibration subs.
- Mosaic integration and cropping (0.5 scale, 4th degree LNC, Catmul-Rom spline) 
- Further gradient removal,  PCC with PI, back to APP for stretching with the default preset 
PI:
- TGV Denoise
- Starnet2 
- Saturation/Brightness adjustement with curves and various masks
- Dark Structure Enhance
- Put the stars back
Darktable
- Astrophoto denoise (masked)
- Slight temperature adjustment
- Color contrast adjustment in the dark regions
- Some cosmetics because if you think the edges are rough you should have seen them before
- Watermark

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Even more Cygnus, dkamen