Conditions: aquired from various dark sites in Utah, on May 20-22, 2004. Excellent conditions, no moon, fine weather.
Setup: Borg 100ED F6.4, DF-2 focusser, CFW-8, L(IR reject)+R+G+B filters, ST10XE, MaximDL/CCD, Takahashi EM-10 mount (here's a picture of this setup at Kodachrome State Park)
Exposure time: L: 8x300 sec (1x1 binning); R,G,B: 6x300 sec (2x2 binning)
Processing (Mira, MaximDL, Registar, Photoshop): dark subtracted, flat fielded, masked hot/cold pixels, de-bloomed with Wodaski's plugin, registered, median/avr combined, DDP, color balanced, cropped and reduced 60% for web format
This image was aquired over three wonderful nights during a trip to Utah. The final processing steps have been strongly inspired by Russell Croman
(www.rc-astro.com/resources), who provides an excellent description of how to use DDP
instead of excessive curves&levels to reduce the brightness range. This procedure helps preserve star colors and reduces the size of halos (see the bottom of my
Snake Nebula page for a comparison). I have deliberately not applied any sharpening since it quickly gives the image a
'processed' look.
Here's my main page where you can see more of the pictures I have taken so far.
Comments greatly appreciated! (mikael@leif.org)
