Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Leo (Leo)  ·  Contains:  Chort (θLeo)  ·  M 65  ·  M 66  ·  NGC 3593  ·  NGC 3623  ·  NGC 3627  ·  NGC 3628  ·  The star 73Leo  ·  The star Chertan  ·  The star ιLeo
Looking into Leo, Richard
Looking into Leo
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Looking into Leo

Looking into Leo, Richard
Looking into Leo
Powered byPixInsight

Looking into Leo

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Back to the 200mm lens and more acquisition time! This widefield shot of the Leo Triplet is still quite significantly cropped because of some difficult gradients on the edges. I captured more time on this target than any previous efforts and spent more time processing. I've lost some galaxy detail but am happy with my star shapes and mostly gradient-free background.

Capture details:

iOptron SkyGuider mount on standard 1.5" tripod (at lowest height), PoleMaster polar-aligned. Canon EOS 5D III DSLR and Canon EF200mm f2.8L II lens attached to mount via lens tripod foot, Arca-Swiss plate, an Arca Swiss clamp and a Feisol panning base.

57 light frames / 30s / f4 / ISO 400

16x dark frames

41x flat frames

~50x bias frames

Initial processing done in PixInsight (Calibration, Debayering, Star Alignment, Integration) followed by: SCNR, dynamic crop, ABE, Wavelets-MultiscaleLinearTransform, AdaptiveStretch, Curves and PhotometricColorCalibration.

Final editing done in Lightroom Classic 9.2 (cold pixel removal + brush stroke adjustments on galaxy for colour, noise reduction and sharpness).

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Looking into Leo, Richard

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