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Astrophotography by Bob Franke

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M36 - Open Cluster

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Click the image for ~ 70% size view. (2400 x 1600 - 1.16 MB)

Instrument

12.5" RCOS @ ~ f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec/pixel. Shown at  0.92 & 2.81 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel & AstroDon Gen-2 RGB filters.

Acquisition Data

2/16/2016 to 2/25/2016 Chino Valley, AZ. with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

RGB

585 min (13 x 15 min. each) Bin 1x1

eXcalibrator RGB ratios are 1.00, 0.71 & 0.73

Software & Processing Notes

 

  • CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6.

  • eXcalibrator v6.2 for (g:r),(b:r) color balancing, using 808 stars from the Pan-STARRS database.

  • CCDBand-Aid to repair KAI-11000M vertical bars.

  • CCDStack to calibrate the all sub exposures.

  • PixInsight to register, data  reject, mean combine, create the RGB image, gradient removal, non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation.

  • PhotoShop for additional background neutralization, background smoothing and green cast removal with HLVG.

  • Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

 

Shown rotated 150° counter-clockwise.

Messier 36 or M36, also known as NGC 1960, is an open star cluster in the Auriga constellation at a distance of about 4,300 light years. The cluster includes ten stars with a visual magnitude brighter than 10 and 178 down to magnitude 14. At about 25 million years, M36 is very young.