I put my name on the waiting list for the Astro-Physics Starfire 130 GTX in 2016. I had given up hope I would ever get one when I received the email notification that Astro-Physics had one waiting for me. It took me a little over a month to receive, configure and put this scope into operation at my observatory in Duquesne, AZ. This image is my first light. Since taking the data for this image, I have made a small adjustment to back focus, but that is hardly visible in this image. Revision B is the new scope installed in my observatory.
LBN 325 is located in Cygnus between the Gamma Cygni nebula and the North America nebula, but a little off to one side. In this image, the OIII component (blue loop arcing out towards the upper left) is a supernova remnant. The Ha signal represents the bright emission nebula LBN 325 and LBN 326. Gary Imm has a good write up of this subject here:
https://www.astrobin.com/9q95c2/As I collected data, I noticed that the OIII signal was significantly weaker than the Ha signal, so I spent three times as much time on the OIII data. The processing on this image is pretty minimal, but I did try a couple of new things.
1. Adam Block's and Mike Cranfield's Narrow Band Colorization Script (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XxB-sOFD0Q)
2. Bill Blanshan's HOONormalizationV5 (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6se3b1ZotMc)
I found the new colorization script to be the most intuitive method of mapping color onto narrow band data I have found so far. Bill's HOONormalization process helped to balance the two very difference signals into a visually appealing image. As usual for me, I replaced the HO stars RGB stars.
Thanks for taking a look!
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