M44, the Beehive Cluster (John Favalessa)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cancer (Cnc) · Contains: 38 Cnc · 39 Cnc · 40 Cnc · 41 eps Cnc · 42 Cnc · Beehive · Beehive cluster · IC 2388 · IC 2390 · M 44 · NGC 2624 · NGC 2625 · NGC 2632 · NGC 2637 · NGC 2643 · NGC 2647 · PGC 1573686 · PGC 1576581 · PGC 1577011 · PGC 1577729 · PGC 1577773 · PGC 1579120 · PGC 1579283 · PGC 1580896 · PGC 1582342 · PGC 1591848 · PGC 24284 · PGC 24315 · PGC 24335 · PGC 24400 · And 4 more.

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M44, the Beehive Cluster

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M44, the Beehive Cluster

I had a really really hard time shooting and then processing this beautiful open cluster. I've come to the conclusion that I need more data, from dark skies, with shorter exposure. Hopefully no clouds on the new moon this month. One of the nearest open clusters to Earth at 610 LYs...only! There are many small galaxies in the image with magnitudes between 10.8 and 14.9, and distances from 191 MLYs to 758MLYs!

I tried out StarSpikes Pro 4. I'm usually not a big fan of diffraction spikes, but I for open clusters I think they can look great. I tried using string on my refractor, kind of worked, but no cigar. I like what StarSpikes was able to do even though its a kludge or better stated a jiggery pokery. Please let me know what you think.

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Actually, a completely new image this time taken with the 2600MM in LRGB at 60X60 each on April 1, 2021. This attempt was to see if my mono camera processing skills could match my OSC level at 10 months experience. I set the black point lower (learning not to go too dark) and used starspikes pro for comparison. The LRGB version has as good color as the OSC but the clarity is cleaner even with the lower black point. for me LRGB processing is more involved but rewarding. I have to pay lots of attention now taking and calibrating the flats and dark flats. So many more files and gigabytes for data! Gosh I have a lot to learn on this journey.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4406101
PixInsight job	Y4CP9JEG5L0VW8PLZ25UEQMSM6RVC2CZ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	08h40m22s.83
RA (top/left)	08h42m40s.54
RA (top/right)	08h43m01s.76
RA (bottom/right)	08h38m03s.90
RA (bottom/left)	08h37m45s.68

Dec (center)	+19°43′44″.3
Dec (top/left)	+18°51′17″.4
Dec (top/right)	+20°32′48″.6
Dec (bottom/right)	+20°36′00″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+18°54′27″.1

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M44, the Beehive Cluster

M44, the Beehive Cluster

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