Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Minor (UMi)  ·  Contains:  1 alf UMi  ·  2 UMi  ·  23 del UMi  ·  24 UMi  ·  IC 455  ·  IC 469  ·  IC 499  ·  IC 512  ·  NGC 1544  ·  NGC 188  ·  NGC 2276  ·  NGC 2300  ·  NGC 3172  ·  Part of the constellation Ursa Minor (UMi)  ·  Polaris  ·  Polarissima Borealis  ·  Sh2-178  ·  The star 24UMi  ·  The star 6Vir  ·  The star Polaris (αUMi)  ·  The star Yildun (δUMi)  ·  Yildun  ·  lam UMi
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Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens
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Polaris Through the Clouds

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens
Powered byPixInsight

Polaris Through the Clouds

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Two panel mosaic of the Polaris Flare. There was a total of 354 120-second light frames split between the two panels. I shot this with my modded Canon 600D, iEXOS-100 mount, and Rokinon 135mm f/2 lens at f/2.4. I guided with PHD2 and dithered every three frames. I had to rotate the guide scope about 30 degrees in declination away from the pole in order for PHD2 to calibrate, which made dithering weird but the movement in declination appeared to be effective.

Calibrated with 30 darks, flats, and dark flats and stacked in APP, followed by star reduction via Starnet++, and final adjustments in GIMP. The background is a bit mottled as I didn't like what noise reduction was doing to the dust, so the noise from the old DSLR is apparent. Comments/feedback welcome and appreciated!

Comments

Revisions

    Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens
    Original
    Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens
    B
    Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens
    C
  • Final
    Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens
    D

B

Description: First light with my mono DSLR! I re-shot two panels with an Astronomik L3 UV/IR cut filter and reprocessed the data as LRGB.

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C

Description: Less heavy-handed with the star reduction, tried to preserve more color in the data.

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D

Title: 2022 Revision

Description: Attempt at bringing back some subtlety to the dust clouds versus the previous version. This time with some help via photometric color calibration, NoiseXTerminator, arcsinh stretch to preserve the star colors, and then LRGBCombination to blend in the luminance data.

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Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Polaris Through the Clouds, Todd Stephens