Imaging telescopes or lenses: Teleskop-Service ONTC 8" f/4 Newton
Imaging cameras: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool
Mounts: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Guiding telescopes or lenses: Teleskop-Service ONTC 8" f/4 Newton
Focal reducers: TS-Optics Coma Corrector GPU
Software: PHD2 · PixInsight · EQASCOM · Seqence Generator Pro
Dates:April 4, 2020 , April 5, 2020 , April 8, 2020 , April 9, 2020 , April 10, 2020 , April 11, 2020 , April 14, 2020
Frames:
Astrodon Blue Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 24x30" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Blue Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 12x300" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Green Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 24x30" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Green Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 12x300" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Lum Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 71x180" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Red Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 24x30" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Red Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 12x300" (gain: 74.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Tru-Balance 1.25" 3nm HA: 182x300" (gain: 200.00) -15C bin 1x1
Astrodon Tru-Balance 1.25" 3nm OIII: 108x300" (gain: 200.00) -15C bin 1x1
Integration: 31.3 hours
Darks: ~30
Flats: ~20
Flat darks: ~100
Avg. Moon age: 15.97 days
Avg. Moon phase: 85.57%
Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 7.00
Astrometry.net job: 3484631
RA center: 17h 59' 13"
DEC center: +66° 38' 34"
Pixel scale: 0.652 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: 0.457 degrees
Field radius: 0.232 degrees
Resolution: 2000x1600
Locations: Backyard, Herent, Belgium
Data source: Backyard
After countless hours, I think I am finally 'done' with this photograph.
It was by far the most difficult target I've ever processed. Finding a way to combine the faint halo and bright core was one of the main challenges of this project.
The Hubble image of NGC 6543 clearly shows evenly spaced, concentric rings around the core. However, I was only able to find a couple amateur images that show these rings. This is where I initially hit a wall in my processing, I just couldn't bring them out. Luckily, I got some helpful advice from the community here and I was able to reveal several rings in the OIII data and one ring in the RGB data.
All data was drizzle stacked and deconvolved to enhance visibility of the core details.
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