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Click the image for a higher
resolution
view. (2619 x 1746 - 1.11 MB)
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Instrument |
12.5" RCOS @
~f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec/pixel. Shown at 0.85 and 2.98 arcsec/pixel. |
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Mount |
Paramount ME |
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Camera |
SBIG STL-11000 w/
FW8 filter wheel, AstroDon Gen-2 Filters |
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Acquisition Data |
10/1/2014
to 10/27/2014 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCD Commander & CCDSoft,
AOL guided. |
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Exposure |
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RGB
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405 min. (9 x 15 min.
each) Bin 1x1 |
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Software & Processing Notes |
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CCDSoft, CCDStack,
PixInsight and Photoshop CS6.
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eXcalibrator
v4.25 for (g:r) color balancing, using 92 stars from the
SDSS-DR9 database.
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CCDBand-Aid to repair
KAI-11000M vertical bars.
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CCDStack to
calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub
exposures and create the RGB image.
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PixInsight
processing includes
gradient removal with DynamicBackgroundExtraction and the initial non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation
& MaskedStretch.
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PhotoShop for the final touch-up.
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Noiseware 5, a
PhotoShop plug-in.
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Comment |
The cluster is shown
rotated 90° counter clockwise.
M15 (NGC 7078) is a
globular cluster in the constellation Pegasus, at a distance of
about 33,600 light years. Jean-Dominique Maraldi discovered the
cluster in 1746. The estimated age is about 12 billion years, making
it one of the oldest known globular clusters.
M15 is about 175 light years in diameter and contains over 100,000
stars. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that an
intermediate-mass black hole resides at the center. |
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