Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  27 Cas)  ·  27 gam Cas  ·  HD236578  ·  HD236592  ·  HD236632  ·  HD4817  ·  HD4931  ·  HD5015  ·  HD5071  ·  HD5149  ·  HD5233  ·  HD5342  ·  HD5408  ·  HD5409  ·  HD5410  ·  HD5429  ·  HD5459  ·  HD5501  ·  HD5649  ·  HD5702  ·  HD5747  ·  HD5787  ·  HD5797  ·  HD5851  ·  HD5890  ·  HD5966  ·  HD6017  ·  HD6026  ·  HD6027  ·  HD6048  ·  And 28 more.
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Gamma Cas, IC 63, IC 59, and Surrounding Nebulosity, Wayne
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Gamma Cas, IC 63, IC 59, and Surrounding Nebulosity

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Gamma Cas, IC 63, IC 59, and Surrounding Nebulosity, Wayne
Powered byPixInsight

Gamma Cas, IC 63, IC 59, and Surrounding Nebulosity

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Description

The Ghost of Cassiopeia and it's neighbors in HaLRGB.

 This is from only 1 night of data shot 2 months ago but I decided to process it anyway and see what I had. I had planned to add more data but, unfortunately, that never came to fruition. It was the only clear night I was able to image that weekend and the following week I found out I'd be moving to the southeast for awhile for work so I turned my attention to darker and fainter targets for my remaining time under the dark CA skies. I now live in a Bortle 8 but have Bortle 4 skies relatively close so initially I remained optimistic that I'd be able to return to this target and shoot more broadband data eventually. Unfortunately though, I've discovered leaving the desert means I now have to deal with clouds—the bane of astrophotographers everywhere else—so my optimism has waned a little. I haven't been able to image for over a month now!! But, on the bright side I now have lots of free time for processing, hence this image! 

 I processed it in PixInsight using a variation of a typical LRGB workflow that I've adopted since the recent improvements in A.I. star removal tools. After background extraction (and color calibration of the combined RGB data) I removed all the stars and continued with a normal LRGB workflow on the starless files to a final-ish state before adding in the Ha and stars. For the starless Ha I just did a simple histogram stretch, noise reduction, and some minor contrast adjustments before blending it into the LRGB image using a variation of the method I used for adding the stars. The stars are RGB only and were stretched and processed to taste before being added to the starless HaLRGB image using a re-linearization technique developed by a friend and described in his guide at https://www.nightphotons.com/guides/star-addition. Something new I tried on this image is using a star mask and Bill Blanshan's star reduction processes to isolate and lightly reduce the small scale stars giving slightly more depth to the starfield. It worked quite well I think and it might become part of my workflow now.

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Gamma Cas, IC 63, IC 59, and Surrounding Nebulosity, Wayne