Northern Summer Milky Way

Northern Summer Milky Way

Northern Summer Milky Way.

Full Resolution (10.0 MB)

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Equipment:

  • Celestron CGEM Mount

  • Voigtlander Ultron 40mm f2 at f5.6

  • asi071mc PRO at 0 C

  • Astronomiks L3 UV/IR filter

  • Manually Focused in NINA with the assistance of the Aberration Inspector and looping exposures.

Acquisition:

  • 95x6m Exposures
  • Total time: 09:42
  • Nights Imaged: 4
  • Started: 2022-10-04
  • Latest: 2022-10-22
Date L3
2022-10-04 1hr 42m
2022-10-05 2hr 30m
2022-10-21 3hr 36m
2022-10-22 1hr 54m
Totals 9:42

Session sequenced using Nighttime Imaging in Astronomy: N.I.N.A

PreProcessing Steps:

  • Blink and toss subs with bad clouds or high LP gradients (leaving subs with satellites and plane trails in)

  • Calibrate all subs using Flats from corresponding nights, Dark Flats and Darks

  • Cosmetic Correction to target remaining hotpixels

  • Subframe Selector using PSFSignalWeight weighting, rejecting subs with high trailing

  • Debayer (VNG)

  • Star Alignment

  • Local Normalization (using WBPP’s interactive method to build a reference using the best 16 exposures

  • Image Integration using ESD and Large Scale Pixel Rejection High

  • Drizzle Integration 2x Drop Shrink 0.9 Variable Kernal 1.5 and CFA Drizzle

Processing Steps:

  • Photometric Color Calibration (PCC) using Average Spiral Galaxy as white reference

  • No Background modeling (wasn’t necessary)

  • TGV Denoise linear using Jon Rista‘s technique (Low contrast mask, local support and careful on the edge protection… didn’t need much)

  • Histogram Transformation to stretch

  • Reduced the astigmatism in the stars by subtracting L from an expanded starmask (to model the contours) and morphological minimum/erosion

  • GHS Color stretch and Saturation Stretch to bring out the colors

  • Dark Structure Enhance to add contrast to the dark molecular clouds

  • Light SCNR Green to reduce the slight green tint.

  • An ICC Profile was applied to enable Black Point Compensation



Constructive criticism is welcome. Let me know what you think! How can I improve?