Diamonds on black velvet (hughsie)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 3 · NGC 5272

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Diamonds on black velvet

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Diamonds on black velvet

Messier 3 is situated in the constellation Canes Venatici and as it is above 40 degrees above the horizon and rising, it made a good target over three relatively moonless nights from my back garden.

Situated some 33,900 light years away, M3 is estimated to be 11 billion years old. Having decided to image M3 I really wanted to avoid a ‘crunchy’ image that sometimes occurs with globular clusters as well as show it in a warmer light rather than stark whites and blues. Hopefully you feel I have gone some way to achieving this.

For those interested in the techy bit, read on.....

Equipment used

WilliamOptics Z103 refractor

ZWO ASI 1600mm Pro Cool camera

SkyWatcher EQ6R- Pro mount

Sesto Senso motor focuser

William Optics Flat 6AII reducer/flattener

Chroma LRGB 1.25” filters

Data captured

Luminance 182 x 1 minute

Luminance 31 x 5 minutes

Red 31 x 2 minutes (Bin 2x2)

Green 34 x 2 minutes (Bin 2x2)

Blue 39 x 2 minutes (Bin 2x2)

Total Integration Time 9.2 hours

Dark Frames x 50

Dark Flats x 50

Flat Frames x 50

Software used

PHD2 for guiding

Sequence Generator Pro for image acquisition

PixInsight for processing the image

Original
Final
B

Messier Catalogue
Star Clusters

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9153216
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Diamonds on black velvet

Diamonds on black velvet

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Diamonds on black velvet

Diamonds on black velvet

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