Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.643 arcsec / pixel.  Shown resampled to 3.15 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

7/29/2009 to 9/20/2009 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.

Exposure

Lum  180 min. (6 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  180 Min  (6 x 10 min. each, bin 1x1)

Click here for a BW Ha version

Click here for a narrowband color mapped version.

Software

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

PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair hot/cold pixels and column defects.

eXcalibrator for (b-v) color calibration, using 11 stars from the NOMAD1 database.

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

PhotoShop for on-linear stretching and color combine.

North is to the top.

NGC 7380 is an open cluster, in Cepheus, discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787... William Herschel's sister. It is also known as 142 in the 1959 Sharpless catalog (Sh2-142).

Just a bit of imagination is need to see a robed wizard, sitting in a chair, with his arms and hands out stretched. Longer viewing reveals more details, pretty much like seeing Mickey Mouse in the clouds.