Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.643 arcsec / pixel. 

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Filters

Acquisition Data

7/26/2009 to 8/9/2009  Chino Valley, AZ

Exposure

Lum    120 min (12 x 10 min, bin 1x1)

RGB    360 min (12 x 10 min each, bin 1x1)

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russ Croman's Gradient Exterminator

CCDStack to register, normalize, data reject, combine sub exposures, pixel math and RGB combine.  eXcalibrator (pre-beta) for color calibration.

PhotoShop for luminance processing and LRGB combine.

Comment

North is to the top.

Messier 56 (also known as M56 or NGC 6779) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lyra. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1779. M56 is at a distance of about 32,900 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 84 light-years across. 

Source: Wikipedia