Planetary Nebula NGC4361
18-Apr-2018
NGC4361 is a planetary nebula with spiral arms similar to a galaxy. The star at the center of the nebula is shedding its outer layers while contracting to form a white dwarf.
Image Integration:
- 34x 120s Luminance
- 35x 240s Luminance
- 36x 240s Red
- 41x 240s Green
- 40x 240s Blue
Total exposure 11 hours 56 minutes.
Hardware:
- Celestron C11 EdgeHD
- SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Luminance, Deep Sky RGB filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Starlight Xpress Active Optics
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
Location:
- Imaged over four nights, high humidity. Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with The SkyX Pro
- Captured with AstroArt 6
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack.
- PixInsight: HDR combination, dynamic background extraction, deconvolution, noise reduction, histogram, curves, color calibration, local histogram equalization.