Deep Space Objects

NGC7380 is an open cluster of stars in Cepheus and the surrounding emission nebulosity is known as the Wizard nebula. It is about 8,500 light years away, about 25′ of arc long and shines around magnitude 7.2.
The above image was constructed from 35 subframes of 240s each. Equipment used was a Skywatcher Quattro150P scope with an aplanatic coma corrector. The scope is natively F4 but works at F3.45 with the coma corrector. Processed in PixInsight. Images taken on 25-10-25.

Leo Triplet (M66 Group). This LRGB image (L=11 images 600s 1×1 binning; only 1 image each of RGB 300s 2×2 binning all @-36C using AG12 and QSI683. Calibrated with darks and flats in Maxim DL. Combined in Maxim, stretched in Fits Liberator using Arcsinh function and scaled peak of 30.0. Some levels and curves adjusted in Photoshop and high pass filter applied.

Monkey’s Head Nebula NGC2174 (Orion). RGB image using AG12 and QSI683. SII (red); H-alpha (green); OIII (blue). Binned 2×2, 12 images of each @ -40C. Calibrated with darks, flats and bias frame in Maxim DL. Combined in Maxim with strong H-a green channel weighted 0.4(red), 0.85(green),0.2(blue). Maxim digital development filter applied. Some levels and curves adjusted in Photoshop and high pass filter applied.

 The bright star at the top of the picture is Alnitak – the left hand star of the 3 stars in Orion’s belt.
LRGB image created using the AG12 and QSI 683
x9 Luminance @1×1 bin 600s -40C
x5 each of R,G,B @2×2 bin 300s -40C
Calibrated and stacked with SD mask in Maxim DL
Digital Development in Maxim (FFT low pass filter, FFT hardness custom 90, auto background and mid-levels)
Luminance has had 2 high pass filters applied
LRGB combined in Photoshop.

M82 is an irregular galaxy (left) and M81 is the spiral galaxy (right). Somewhat noisy image.

This image shows less detail of M82 but is less noisy. M82 is incorrectly scaled in this image – I’ll reprocess it when I get time.