Test Shot of the Sculptor Galaxy
10-Oct-2015
I was playing around with my camera binning modes in preparation for a dark sky trip next weekend, and ended up with this. Even though it's just a test shot, I think it turned out pretty well. New lesson learned; don't overexpose the stars.
Image:
- 8x 5 minute Red bin3x3 + 15x Flats + 20x Dark + 50x Bias
- 7x 5 minute Green bin3x3 + 15x Flats + 20x Dark + 50x Bias
- 7x 5 minute Blue bin3x3 + 15x Flats + 20x Dark + 50x Bias
- 11x 7 minute Luminance bin2x2 + 18x Flats + 40x Dark + 120x Bias
Hardware:
- Celestron EdgeHD 1100 with CGEM DX mount
- Celestron 0.7x EdgeHD focal reducer
- QSI 683-wsg Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik LRGB filters Type 2c
- Orion StarShoot Autoguider
Location:
- Orange zone near Brisbane, Australia.
- Average-Good seeing + new moon phase.
Software:
- Captured with AstroArt 5
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, upscale & combine RGB, levels on Luminance.
- Astra Image 5.0: Deblur, Deconvolve.
- Photoshop CC: levels, combine RGB+luminance, selective noise reduction, shadows/highlights, high pass filter, contrast