OPEN CLUSTER NGC 2264, THE CHRISTMAS TREE CLUSTER
PLUS THE SNOWFLAKE CLUSTER, CONE NEBULA AND THE FOXFUR NEBULA
BEAUTIFUL NEBULOUS REGIONS NEAR S MONOCEROTIS
"HaLRGB" image taken 12/25/06 (click on image for larger size):
Here is the H-Alpha data only (click on image for larger size):
Image acquisition and processing details:
| Telescope: | William Optics Zenithstar 105mm APO refractor, f/5.6 with 0.8 FR/FF. |
| Mount: | Celestron CGE, remotely controlled with NexRemote. |
| Camera: | SBIG ST-10XME cooled to -30C, internal guiding. All images binned 1x1. |
| Filters, Exposure Times: | AstroDon Lum 45 min (9x5 min), Hydrogen-Alpha 160 min (16x10 min) Red/Green/Blue 45 min each filter (9x5 min each). |
| Dates: | 25-Dec-2006 |
| Moon Phase: | 26% |
| Location: | Xanadu Observatory, Backyard in Tucson, AZ |
| Software: | MaximDL, TheSky, CCDInspector, CCDStack, Adobe Photoshop |
| Notes: | I took this image on Christmas Eve and early Christmas Morning,
after a wonderful family dinner and before Santa arrived with the
presents. To process this image I combined the H-Alpha and Red filter images in an 80/20 ratio as outlined on Rob Gendler's excellent website. I then made an RGB image using this combination as the "R" channel. Then I added the H-Alpha as a luminance layer, plus I added the Luminance filter data in Lighten mode with 50% opacity. There were some awful reflection artifacts in the blue channel near the middle top of the image. They were in a general background region so I used the Patch Tool to remove them before combining the blue channel. |