Star clusters as seen from the backyard over a period of 4 nights, spanning from March 22, April 5, 6, & 7. All were taking in the backyard under varying skies. Subject was framed originally in TheSkyX to show the two clusters with the line of stars on the side. I like how the annotated version shows all the galaxies hiding in the background. If I'd taken this set up at a dark site vs the backyard, these galaxies would show up much better. The annotated version is here:
https://flic.kr/p/mVutsKThe image set used 52 sub exposures at 1200 seconds each for 17 hours of integration.
Standard setup for my astrophotos: Stellarvue SV4 telescope, modified and cooled Pentax K10D camera, flattener, autoguider, etc. The reason why this series of sessions is because I'm continuing to chase flexure and these objects are placed nicely for a long experiment as they arc high in the sky and allow a lot of experimenting.
Guided and calibrated with Maxim.
Stacked with DSS.
Processed with PixInsight: crop, DBE, Masked Stretch script, Histogram tool to clip shadows and boost midrange, lightness mask applied for noise control on the darker regions while protecting the stars, Denoise, Unsharp Mask, and curves used to selectively enhance or demphisize details.
Here are the platesolve results from PI:
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 90.445 deg
Focal ............. 653.81 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.05 um
Field of view ..... 1d 59' 34.6" x 1d 17' 50.5"
Image center ...... RA: 13 14 55.764 Dec: +18 17 13.83
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 13 17 36.814 Dec: +17 17 05.01
top-right ...... RA: 13 17 42.680 Dec: +19 16 37.10
bottom-left .... RA: 13 12 10.745 Dec: +17 17 41.61
bottom-right ... RA: 13 12 12.842 Dec: +19 17 14.12
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