Likely CA, June 16, 2023
The object was low in the sky as a second target of one night of imaging. The next two nights at the site were cloud covered. So, a small number of subframes were captured with red, green, and blue filters. The red filter subframe count was low as it was the last filter used and limited by the approaching dawn. Luckily, M24, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud is very bright. The resulting colors across the field are more or less natural.
Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's catalog of deep sky objects that were not comets, M24 is a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that reveals the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. This window is over 300 light years wide with some stars up to 10,000 light-years or more away. There is an open star cluster, NGC 6603, in the foreground. There are several dark nebulae blocking light from the stars, LDN 323, the Black Hole, and LDN 327, the Black Spot. (NASA)
Imaging details:
Stellarvue SVX102T refractor with 0.74x focal reducer (FL = 528mm, f/5.2)
ZWO large off-axis guider with a ZWO ASI 174MM mini guide camera
Losmandy G11 mount with Gemini 2
ZWO ASI 2600MM Pro cooled monochrome camera (-10oC)
Chroma 36mm Red, Green, and Blue filters
Equatorial camera rotation: 0o
Software: Sequence Generator Pro, ASTAP plate solving, PHD2 guiding,
Losmandy Gemini ASCOM mount control and web client interface,
SharpCap Pro for polar alignment with a Polemaster camera,
PixInsight 1.8.9-1,
Photoshop 24.5 2023
Red 2 min x 17 subframes (34 min), Gain 100, Offset 32, 1x1 binning
Green 2 min x 25 subframes (50 min), Gain 100, Offset 32, 1x1 binning
Blue 2 min x 25 subframes (50 min), Gain 100, Offset 32, 1x1 binning
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