Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2897 mm fl) 0.641 arcsec / pixel.  Shown at 0.85 and 1.24 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

2/9/2011 to 3/29/2011 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

Lum 420 min (28 x 15 min, bin 1x1...  best 28 of 56)

Ha   840 min (28 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

RGB 585 min (13 x 15 min each, bin 2x2)

RGB combine ratios are 1.00, 0.91 1.02

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6.

eXcalibrator v5.0 for (g:r) color balancing, using 35 stars from the SDSS-DR9 database.

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

CCDStack to calibrate all sub exposures and create the RGB image.

PixInsight to register, normalize, data reject, combine the luminance sub exposures, gradient removal, non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation and to create the LRGB image.

PhotoShop to add the Ha data and final touch-up.

Noiseware Pro, a PhotoShop plug-in.

North is to the right.

NGC 5033 is located in the constellation Canes Venatici, at a distance of about 49 million light years. This image shows several of the pink HII star forming areas. The NED database identifies 423 HII regions in NGC 5033.