My first deep sky image using the scopes on the iTelescope remote network. The images were taken over two days on the T14 and T20 scopes in New Mexico. Both scopes use the same Takahashi 106mm refractor and SBIG camera. The great thing about the remote iTelescope network – apart from the obvious dark and clear skies in places like New Mexico and Siding Spring, is that the raw FITS files you receive are ready dark and flat fielded, so you don’t have the hassle of having to worry about these during the integration process.
This image of the Cocoon was take over two nights spaced 8 days apart. A total of 10 x 300 second light were taken through an Ha filter. All images were combined and stacked in Pixinsight 1.08. DBE followed by ABE to remove any background gradient – which was minimal. This was then followed by a bit of Multi Scale Linear Transformation to reduce the noise, followed by a full stretch.Then given a HDR Multiscale Transform to bring out some of the detail nebula, before loading the image into Afinity Pro for a final tweek and a High Pass sharpen.
I was quite surprised at how little processing this image required. Low light pollution, dry and stable air meant that I wasn’t having to fight poor UK weather to get through to the underlying image. I took these images back in January this year and the plan is to revisit the target soon to collect some colour data and add this to the image.