Symbiotic Star System R Aquarii
21-Sep-2017
R Aquarii is a symbiotic star system where a white dwarf is drawing material from its binary red giant companion. The extra material is then ejected into space in loops and jets.
Image:
- 22x 60s Luminance bin1x1
- 36x 210s Luminance bin1x1
- 70x 480s Luminance bin1x1
- 8x 30s Red bin2x2
- 10x 105s Red bin2x2
- 20x 240s Red bin2x2
- 9x 30s Green bin2x2
- 9x 105s Green bin2x2
- 21x 240s Green bin2x2
- 10x 30s Blue bin2x2
- 10x 105s Blue bin2x2
- 18x 240s Blue bin2x2
Total exposure 16 hours 48 minutes.
Hardware:
- Celestron C11 EdgeHD
- SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Typ2 LRGB filters
- Starlight Xpress Active Optics
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
- Imaged over 3 nights, new moon.
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
- Captured with AstroArt 6
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- FocusLock live focusing
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution, remove gradients, combine RGB.
- Photoshop CC: Create HDR combination, combine L+RGB, noise reduction, curves, adjust colour balance, saturation, crop.