Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph)  ·  Contains:  M 62  ·  NGC 6266
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M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night), Ian Parr
M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night)
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M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night), Ian Parr
M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night)
Powered byPixInsight

M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night)

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Description

Messier 62 also known as NGC 6266, is an intense globular cluster of stars in the south of the equatorial constellation of Ophiuchus about 21,500 light years from Earth and is among the ten most massive and luminous globular clusters in the Milky Way.

There appears to a well defined dark lane traversing the cluster from 11 o'clock down to 5pm which reveals a definite demarcation between reddish star population on the right and blueish stars on the left, which is I hope not an artefact from light pollution, or DBE gone mad,  but a genuine variance in colour of the star populations  to the left and right of that dark(ish) lane across the globular.

The globular itself contains a wonderful mixture of red and blue stars. The astronomical data tells me that the cluster has two principal generations of Stars, the later generation having high metallicity and may be one the galaxy's richest in terms of RR Lyrae variables, as well as containing Cephid Variables, blue stragglers and X-ray sources. So I am pretty happy with that as it the variance across the field may have something to do with existence of such powerful object in that region, or not.

The miracle of a new moon coinciding the neighbours being away and leaving their outside LED blazars off, allowed another good night and what a difference having more sub-frames makes, especially  one it comes to sub-frame rejection.

Also a much lighter approach to processing when there this many stars in the field delivered a more pleasing result. Normalised Scale Gradient, Drizzle, and DBE before combination, followed by Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch for Non-Linear conversion, as very basic range mask and some gentle Curves Transformation, and then cleaned up with Noise Exterminator and lastly EZ Star Reduction which got around boxy results from Star Exterminator that made other great Star Reduction techniques that rely or a starless image a bit rough. I suspect it the was the scale of the colour distribution across the image and the dark lane that defeated those algorithms and turned the starless globular into a unusable hard square. 

Might be a good time to chase a few more globular cluster while the conditions allow RGB, before I am forced back the hellish nightscape that is Narrow Band under light polluted skies.

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M62 (NGC6266) The Flickering Globular Cluster in RGB (Again after one more good night), Ian Parr