Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  Shown at 1.12 and 3.10 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

7/7/2013 to 10/6/2013 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot5 & CCDSoft AOL guided.

Exposure

Lum  750 min. (25 x 30 min. bin 1x1) best of 45

RGB  450 min. (10 x 15 min. bin 2x2, each)

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS6, PixInsight and Noel Carboni's actions.

• eXcalibrator v4.2 for (b-v) color balancing, using 32 stars from the NOMAD database.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures, selective Maximum Entropy deconvolution and create the RGB image.

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

• PhotoShop for the LRGB combine & final touch-up.

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

The image is rotated 45 degrees clockwise

NGC 6951 is face-on Seyfert Type II galaxy in the constellation Cepheus. At a distance of about 75 million light-years, the galaxy is viewed through the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN). The residual light of our galaxy illuminates this faint nebula. The galaxy is also cataloged as NGC 6952. The NED and Simbad databases label the galaxy as NGC 6951.