ASTROPIXELSEATONS HILL OBSERVATORY
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FROM THE OBSERVATORY · 03-Aug-2016

Trifid Nebula in HaLRGB

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Trifid Nebula in HaLRGB
Almost everyone has a go at imaging the Trifid nebula, which is composed of 3 different type of nebulae; emission, reflection, and absorption. When I noticed some faint red glow in the background, I decided to try integrating some long hydrogen emission line frames to see if I could get any structure out of it. I'm quite happy with the resulting background structures!
BEHIND THE IMAGE

Notes from the session

Image:
31x 600s Luminance bin1x1 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
19x 300s Red bin2x2 + 12 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
19x 300s Green bin2x2 + 12 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
19x 300s Blue bin2x2 + 12 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
31x 1200s H-alpha bin1x1 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias



Total exposure 20 hours 15 minutes.

Hardware:

Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120
SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik Typ 2c LRGB, 6nm Ha filters
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 4 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, combine RGB.
Photoshop CC: Merge Lum+Ha as luminance, curves, high pass filter, merge HaL+RGB, minimum filter, color adjustment, saturation.