Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.) Captured at 2.1 arcsec/pixel.  Shown at 4.2 and 8.96 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Losmandy G11 with Gemini L4 v1.0

Camera

SBIG STF-8300M Self Guiding Package w/ mono ST-i, using an AstroDon 5nm Ha & Baader RGB filters.

Acquisition Data

9/20/2014 to 10/6/2014 Chino Valley, AZ

Exposure

 eXcalibrator RGB ratios are 1.00, 1.20 & 1.42

 Click here for an Ha filtered b/w image.

Software

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight & Photoshop CS6.

• No SDSS stars were available for color balancing, so a standard image-train calibration was used, as determined by eXcalibrator v4.30, and then adjusted for altitude extinction.

• CCDStack to calibrate the sub exposures.

• PixInsight processing includes registration and stacking the sub exposures, creating the RGB image, gradient repair, the initial non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation and MaskedStretch.

• PhotoShop to create (upper) [HaR]GB image and final touch up. The stars were slightly dimmed by first selecting them with a PhotoShop action.  The lower image uses Rob Gendler's method for adding Ha data to an RGB image.

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

North is to the top.

IC 59 & 63, the Ghosts of Cassiopeia, are located about 600 light years from Earth. IC 59, the "ghost" at the upper right, is classified as a reflection nebula. IC 63, to the left and lower, is classified as an emission nebula. However, it does show some blue reflection components. Their main source of illumination is the nearby 2.15 magnitude star Gamma Cassiopeia.