Hi All,
I finally found some time to reprocess this NGC 7023 which was shot this summer.
I did a first process at the time but was not happy with it.
It's a stack of 556 x 60s exposures (roughly 9h cumulated) but I think that it is the limit of what is possible with 60 seconds subs with my 10" Skywatcher and my sky (not too much LP, but not dark either).
NGC 7023 is an emission/reflection nebula with very faint extensions and even with 9 hours I still have a lot of noise.
After taking a quick look at the new ACDNR process and its outstanding results on some old photos I decided to give it a serious shot.
Besides I tried also to have a shot at my stars processing by using 4 different star masks (a little overkill but one must be sure).
Technical DataLocation: St Martin d'Uriage (France - Alps)
Altitude: 850 m
Telescope: Skywatcher 10" on EQ6 (mod Rajiva)
Camera: Canon EOS 350D (non mod at the time) + MPCC prime focus
556 x 60s lights frames @ ISO 800
Date: July 19, 20, 21st, 22nd and 23rd 2006
Pre-processing: DeepSkyStacker (
http://deepskystacker.free.fr)
Light calibration, dark and offset/bias subtraction, flat application
Stacking: kappa-sigma
Post-processing: PixInsight Standard beta 3 build 228
Almost everything was used: histogram, dynamic background extraction, curves, wavelets, morphology transformation, masks, PixelMaths, Unsharp mask, and last but not least noise reduction (ACNDR)
Here is the image (it's a 33% crop of the full frame)
And a 50% crop of the central part
Here is the link to the full resolution.
http://deepskystacker.free.fr/Gallery/NGC7023/NGC7023_2006_Full.jpgHope you like it
,
Luc
