Imaging telescopes or lenses: Asahi Pentax Super Takumar 135mm f/3.5
Mounts: iOptron SkyGuider Pro
Software: Astro Pixel Processor APP
Filters: Optolong L-eNhance 2" L-eNhance 2"
Dates:Oct. 4, 2019
Frames: 565x120"
Integration: 18.8 hours
Avg. Moon age: 6.22 days
Avg. Moon phase: 37.79%
Astrometry.net job: 3256082
RA center: 20h 49' 56"
DEC center: +30° 27' 10"
Pixel scale: 6.555 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: 58.628 degrees
Field radius: 3.306 degrees
Resolution: 2903x2180
Locations: Home Observatory, Marquette, Michigan, United States
Data source: Backyard
Veil nebula complex through a vintage Super Takumar SMC 135mm f/3.5 lens. This started out as an RGB image, but the chromatic aberration was so bad through this lens that the nebula was hardly visible. Then I added about 11 hours of data through a dual-band filter, but unfortunately this lens was not capable of focusing the OIII and H-a wavelengths simultaneously. I added an additional 2 hours of H-a data before the clouds struck. The combined HOO image looked decent, but the background was very noisy and the stars had a blue cast.
This image is a combination of the RGB background and stars. The stars were removed, and then a stars-only image was generated in GIMP. Then the HOO image was blended with the RGB background without stars with a luminance mask. The stars were blended back in, first with the "erode" filter to eliminate the dimmest stars. Then the full star image was blended back with 10% opacity to minimize the impact of the dim stars, which blended in nicely with the sharp HOO image.
The image is still not so great... but considering where it started... maybe not half bad?
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