M88 5/7/10-5/8/10

23 May 2010

Now that summer is approaching, we are starting to get more opportunities to do deep sky imaging.
The following was taken over two nights from Port Gamble, Washington – A fairly dark site that is near sea level.

M88 – Galaxy
30 exposures, with 6-minute subs at ISO 1600
Imaging scope:  Celestron C11 on CGE Mount
Filters/Reducers:  Baader UV/IR filter, Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer
Imaging camera:  Canon XS/1000d with heatmirror replace with Baader filter glass
Guide scope:  Vixen ED80SF
Guide camera:  Imaging source DMK21AU04.AS
Captured with Nebulosity
Guided with PHD
Stacked in DSS

Processing in Fitswork
* high/low cutoff to separate DSS stacked image into four layers
* iterative gaussian shapening on each layer
* wavelet NR on background layer
* add all layers together once sharpening completed
* star reduction
* rough histogram adjust

Color and exposure adjustments in Raw Therapee
* color boost/shift
* color NR
* exposure adjust, highlights adjust, midtones adjust

Final processing in Gimp
* final levels
* final crop
* star rounding (using Astronomy plugin)

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to process this data.  Really an education for me and I have learned a tremendous amount about image processing from this project.

Note that there are several smaller galaxies (aka fuzzies!) present in the photo.  The irregularly-shaped object in the center right of the picture is Galaxy IC 3476.

Enjoy!