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 9/18/2009 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.

Exposure

SII    720 min.  (24 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Ha    570 min. (19 x 30 min. bin 1x1)
OIII  720 min. (24 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

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

SII,Ha & OIII are mapped to RGB respectivly. 

An RGB overlay of star colors was added.

Click here for a BW Ha version

Click here for a natural color version.

Software

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

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

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures & initial non-linear stretching.

PhotoShop for continued non-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).

This false color image was acquired with Ha, SII and OIII filters mapped to the RGB channels respectively. The colors of top image more closely follow the Hubble Palette. The presence of sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen are more clearly shown. Red indicates the presence sulfur, green hydrogen and blue oxygen. With no color manipulation, the image would be basically green, due to the dominance of hydrogen.

The lower image was severely processed to produce ever popular gold and turquoise colors, but still reveals a similar structure to the nebula.

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.