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Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  27 gam Cas  ·  IC 59  ·  IC 63  ·  LBN 620  ·  LBN 622  ·  LBN 623  ·  LBN 625  ·  Sh2-185  ·  The star Navi (γCas)  ·  gamma Cas nebula
IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope, Aaron Freimark
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IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope

IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope, Aaron Freimark
Powered byPixInsight

IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope

Equipment

Imaging Telescopes Or Lenses
William Optics FLT 120
Imaging Cameras
ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
Mounts
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Filters
ZWO SII 1.25" 7nm · ZWO G 1.25" · ZWO B 1.25" · ZWO R 1.25" · ZWO Ha 1.25" 7nm
Accessories
Pegasus Astro Powerbox Advanced · MeLE Quieter2Q · William Optics Flattener 68III
Software
Open PHD Guiding Project PHD2 · Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA) · GSServer · PixInsight
Guiding Telescopes Or Lenses
Williams Optics Uniguide 50mm
Guiding Cameras
ZWO ASI290MM Mini

Acquisition details

Dates:
Dec. 4, 2021 ·  Dec. 13, 2021 ·  Dec. 17, 2021 ·  Dec. 19, 2021 ·  Dec. 20, 2021
Frames:
ZWO B 1.25": 60×30″(30′)
ZWO G 1.25": 60×300″(5h)
ZWO Ha 1.25" 7nm: 163×300″(13h 35′)
ZWO R 1.25": 60×30″(30′)
ZWO SII 1.25" 7nm: 64×300″(5h 20′)
Integration:
24h 55′
Avg. Moon age:
10.82 days
Avg. Moon phase:
73.85%

RA center: 00h59m56s.273

DEC center: +60°59′50″.79

Pixel scale: 0.499 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: -103.822 degrees

Field radius: 0.723 degrees

WCS transformation: thin plate spline

More info:Open 

Find images in the same area

Resolution: 8112x6592

File size: 13.8 MB

Locations: Front Yard @ Home, Cold Spring, New York, United States

Data source: Backyard

Description

I shot IC 63 “Cassiopeia’s Ghost” last year, and wanted to repeat with my new 120mm refractor. Wow, it was quite the challenge. It took 5 nights to gather the data I wanted. It’s also my first big project using NINA for acquisition. (Thanks for the encouragement @Tony Jerig !)

Preprocessing:
  1. WeightedBatchProcessing
  2. Subframe Selector using (number of) Stars for weight
  3. Image Registration
  4. Local Normalization
  5. Image Integration
  6. Drizzle Integration
  7. Dynamic Crop

 R/G/B:
  1. Channel Combination
  2. Statistics to determine that B is the brightest
  3. LinearFit R & G to B
  4. ChannelCombination
  5. EZ Denoise
  6. DynamicBackgroundExtraction to divide the background
  7. EZ Soft Stretch to median 0.15
  8. Morphological Transformation to reduce star sizes

 Ha/SII:
  1. EZ Denoise
  2. StarXTerminator on the linear image (great results for Ha!)
  3. EZ SoftStretch to median 0.2
  4. CloneStamp to manually clean up around 800 StarXTerminator turds in SII (OK maybe not so great results)
  5. Export Ha & SII to TIFF (16-bit)
  6. Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill to remove the huge blown-out star (cheating?)
  7. Back to PixInsight
  8. PixelMath to combine a narrowband mix:
    • R: 0.9*Ha + 0.1*SII
    • G: 0.4*Ha + 0.6*SII
    • B: 0.3*Ha + 0.7*SII

  9. CurvesTransformation
  10. UnsharpMask

 Mask - this will darken or even remove stars in front of the nebula, which is very unscientific but pretty.
  1. Extract CIE*L from NB
  2. HistogramTransformation to create a severe version that works as a mask
  3. Apply to RGB (stars)
  4. PixelMath “0” onto the masked star image, which will blacken out the brightest parts of the nebula
  5. Remove mask

 Combination:
  1. PixelMath: “1-((1-RGB)*(1-NB))” — I prefer this “multiply” effect over a simple “add”

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope, Aaron Freimark
    Original
  • IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope, Aaron Freimark
    B

B

Title: IC63 (Starless)

Uploaded: ...

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IC 63 Cassiopeia's Ghost in RGB + Ha + SII, reshot with my new scope, Aaron Freimark

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