Letter Y Cluster

NGC 1893 is an open cluster in the constellation Auriga. The star cluster is imbedded in the emission nebula IC 410.

IC 410 is a beautiful emission nebula being sculpted by the stellar winds and radiation from the embedded open star cluster NGC 1893.

This Cluster is about 12,400 light years away and has a diameter of about 12 arc-minutes.

To me it looks like a profile of a Monkey Head, with the monkey looking right.

This image was created from 177 images, each with 3 minutes of exposure at unity gain. The camera is a ZWO ASI294MC Pro one-shot-color camera.

Most of the processing was done with PixInsight. I used Lightroom to make a few minor

adjustments.

PixInsight Processing -

-> Blink - remove bad frames

-> SubframeSelector - analyse frames for FWHM, # of stars, Ecentricity etc

-> ImageCalibration - use calibration frames to help remove fixed patterns etc

-> CosmeticCorrection - fix hot and cold pixels

-> Debayer - fix the colors before allignment

-> StarAllignment - registration to align the images.

-> LocalNormalization - normalize the images to reduce gradients

-> ImageIntegration - combine all the images into one !

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-> DynamicCrop - get rid of overlapping around edges

-> Even R,G,B colors -

ChannelExtraction - separate Red, Green and Blue channels

LinearFit - make all three channels the same intensity

ChannelCombination - Put the channels back together

-> AutomaticBackgroundExtractor - reduce unwanted colors in background

-> SCNR - get rid of unwanted green in image

-> BackgroundNeutralization - equalizes the average red, green and blue components

-> ColorCalibration - calibrate colors based on a neutral background

-> Create two masks, 1=luminance mask, 2=further stretching of 1

-> MultiscaleLinearTransform - denoise using mask 1

-> ACDNR - further denoise if needed

-> Stretch using ScreenTransferFunction and HistogramTransformation

-> HDRMultiscaleTransform - using mask 2

-> CurvesTransformation (mask 2)- luminance, saturate, RGB/K

-> LocalHistogramEqualization (mask 2) - bring out structures

-> UnsharpMask (mask 1) - give edges more contrast

-> StarMask - reduce overpowering stars as needed