Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl). Imaged at 1.28 ArcSec/pixel,  shown resampled to 1.72.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel, AstroDon Filters

Acquisition Data

4/6/2014 to 4/25/2014  Chino Valley, AZ. with CCDSoft and CCD Commander

Exposure

RGB    270 min.  (9 x 10 min. bin 2x2) each

Synthetic Luminance

Software

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight and Photoshop CS6.

• eXcalibrator v4.25 for (g:r) color balancing, using 28 stars from the SDSS-DR9 database.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, data reject, combine the sub exposures and create the RGB image.

• PixInsight for gradient removal and initial non-linear stretching.

• PhotoShop for the final touch-up.

Comment

North is to the top.

NGC 5053 was discovered by Frederick William Herschel in 1784. The cluster is about 53,000 light years from Earth. This makes M53 and NGC 5053 relatively close neighbors. NGC 5053 was originally classified as an open cluster. More recent spectroscopic studies have confirmed is true nature as a loosely packed globular cluster..