Imaging telescopes or lenses: Astro-Physics Riccardi-Honders 305mm
Imaging cameras: Finger Lakes Instruments ML16200
Mounts: 10 Micron GM3000 HPS
Guiding telescopes or lenses: Stellarvue F050G
Guiding cameras: ZWO ASI178MM
Software: Pleaides Astrophoto PixInsight 1.8 Ripley · Starkeeper Voyager · PHD2
Filters: Astrodon Gen 2 Series I Green · Astrodon Gen 2 Series I Blue · Astrodon Gen 2 Series I Red
Dates:Nov. 9, 2020
Frames: 282x140"
Integration: 11.0 hours
Avg. Moon age: 23.11 days
Avg. Moon phase: 39.87%
Astrometry.net job: 4002347
RA center: 0h 52' 42"
DEC center: +56° 37' 30"
Pixel scale: 1.103 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: -0.923 degrees
Field radius: 0.685 degrees
Resolution: 3384x2920
Locations: Mathias, Mathias, WV, United States
Data source: Own remote observatory
Remote source: Non-commercial independent facility
Although this is listed as "own remote observatory" it's not actually mine. I was invited as a guest into someone else's own remote observatory and while my equipment is there, this was taken with his (very nice) equipment.
This is the Pacman Nebula in RGB and was interesting to process. First, it was my first image with a CCD camera and it was interesting to see how processing CCD data differed from my own ASI1600 CMOS camera. On the plus side, the noise was smoother and better behaved. On the downside, the higher read noise made for longer exposures. Though on the plus side it was a 16-bit camera compared to my 12-bit camera. On the whole, it was pretty easy data to work with.
The image scale was just over 1"/pixel and quite a bit finer than on my rig. In the end I kept processing fairly simple:
On each R, G and B master:
Mure Denise
DBE
For the combined RGB master:
channel combination
PCC
Histogram Transformation
LHE (using a range mask)
Curves for saturation and contrast
Adv Sharpening script
Adam Block's modified star de-emphasis using starnet++
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