Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph)  ·  Contains:  M 62  ·  NGC 6266
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M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert, Ian Parr
M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert
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M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert, Ian Parr
M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert
Powered byPixInsight

M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert

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Description

Messier 62 also known as NGC 6266, is an intense globular cluster of stars in the south of the equatorial constellation of Ophiuchus about 21,500 light years from Earth and is among the ten most massive and luminous globular clusters in the Milky Way.

There appears to a well defined dark lane traversing the cluster from 11 o'clock down to 5pm which reveals a definite demarcation between reddish star population on the right and blueish stars on the left, which is I hope not an artefact from light pollution, or DBE gone mad,  but a genuine variance in colour of the star populations  to the left and right of that dark(ish) lane across the globular.

The globular itself contains a wonderful mixture of red and blue stars. The astronomical data tells me that the cluster has two principal generations of Stars, the later generation having high metallicity and may be one the galaxy's richest in terms of RR Lyrae variables, as well as containing Cephid Variables, blue stragglers and X-ray sources. So I am pretty happy with that as it the variance across the field may have something to do with existence of such powerful object in that region, or not.

The miracle of a new moon coinciding the neighbours being away and leaving their outside LED blazars off, allowed another good night and what a difference having more sub-frames makes, especially  when it comes to sub-frame rejection.

This higher resolution update takes advantage of SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch as well as GraXPert for backgroud  extraction to get more accurate star colours across the field.

For concentrated Star fields BlurXterminator needs to be tamed and seems to work best on the Combined Image with a Manual PSF,  Sharpen Non Stellar set to to zero to stop background artefacts getting in the way around stars.

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M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB with SpectrophotometricColorCalibration, BlurXTerminator and GraXpert, Ian Parr