Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.)  Captured at 3.5 arcsec/pixel.  Shown resampled to 16.8 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

12/27/2008 to 1/3/2009 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3

Exposure

SII    270 min. (9  x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Ha    300 min. (10 x 30 min. bin 1x1)
OIII  270 min. (9  x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  150 min. (5  x 10 min. Each... bin 1x1)

SII,Ha & OIII are mapped to RGB respectivly.  An RGB overlay was added for the star colors.

Click here for a BW Ha version

Click here for a natural color version.

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject & combine the sub exposures.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching and color combine.

North is to the bottom, it looks better up side down.

All three images were created using the Hubble color palette. The colors in the top image follow the spirit of the palette and the hydrogen (green), sulfur (red) and oxygen (blue) areas can easy be identified. The middle image was processed to exaggerate the separate areas for the three elements. In the third image, everything is pretty much thrown out the window, to produce the popular turquoise and orange motif.