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