Barnard 352 (HaRGB) (Linda)

Barnard 352 (HaRGB)

Link: https://lindasastronomyadventures.space/?p=10229

Back in the spring I bought a used Takahashi TOA-130. It's taken a while to get it going, mostly waiting for a backordered parts. My reducer finally came in (still waiting for the non-reducing flattener) and this was the first complete image with it.

I was worried my EQ6-r Pro would not be up to the challenge...this is a very long and very heavy telescope. It handles it better than I'd expected. I only lost a few of my 6.5 minute exposures but the 10 minute exposures were hit a bit harder. I rejected about 60% of the because the eccentricity was greater than 0.6. The actual total guiding error was not high bu the difference between RA and DEC was high enough to cause visible elongation in too many 10 minute frames. I'll need to do some more testing to see whether I can tune the guiding or will need to reduce the narrowband exposures.

In addition to a new telescope this is the first image with the QHY268M. I really like the look of the data out of this camera. It's clean and easy to process. I think it's going to be a great performer!

Processing for this was fairly simple:

For each R, G, B and H-a master:
dynamic crop

RGB:
channel combination (RGB)
PCC
histogram transformation
TGV Denoise
EZ Star Reduction script (using mask generated by AdvStarmask script)
NBRGBCombination to add in H-a
Dark Structure Enhance script

I tried deconvolution but couldn't find good settings. I also didn't do any sharpening because even with the lightest touch it overemphasized the stars and the nebulosity doesn't really have much in the way of detail.

Overall it was a decent test of the new setup. I've got a plan to see what I can improve and a fall back in case I can't. Ultimately a better mount is the solution but that will take a while to happen.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5004255
PixInsight job	A2L3IO5WCIF0P0JCOQPK0XIGW2JUO3J2
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	20h56m46s.61
RA (top/left)	20h51m32s.67
RA (top/right)	21h02m00s.45
RA (bottom/right)	21h02m06s.84
RA (bottom/left)	20h51m26s.10

Dec (center)	+45°54′17″.3
Dec (top/left)	+45°19′43″.5
Dec (top/right)	+45°19′49″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+46°28′01″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°27′56″.5

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