NGC2112 in HaLRGB

[emyliano2000]

After seeing on the web a nice cluster from the southern hemisfere with a lot of backround Ha, I had a zoom through stellarium to see if I can find a similar one that I can do from my back garden.

It didn't take long until I found the NGC2112 cluster that sits very nicely inside the Bernard's loop, so I went for it.

Originally I only shot 15x300sec Ha but that didn't give me the details I was after, so I added another 3x300sec and 13x600sec in the hope that I could get some structure in the hydrogen alpha cloud.

Even with this amount of Ha the details are not as I was hoping so I presume that it won't be getting any better if I add more to it.

 

NGC2112 is a 9th magnitude medium sized open cluster located 4 degrees northeast of Altanik, the east star of Orion's belt, 2800 light-years away from us and it contains about a hundred stars.

 

The cluster is being on top of the Barnard's loop covering the eastern region of Orion.

 

With an estimated age of around 2 billion years this relatively loose cluster lies in a fairly rich field and most of the stars are faint. In a 6-inch scope, look for a smattering of only a few 12th-13th magnitude stars.

 

Eq6

AstroTech 106LE

TSFlat 2" field flattener

ASI294MM Pro Cmos camera, cooled at - 15°C

8x1.25" ZWO USB filterwheel

Chroma 1.25" RGB and 3nm Ha filter

Qhyccd QHY5L-IIM guide camera

9x50mm finder-guider

Qhyccd Polemaster

 

Date: 25.01 to 18.02.2021

Location: Bushey, bortle 7

Ha: 18x300sec and 13x600sec Bin 2x2, Gain 200 Offset 10

RGB: 12x180sec per channel Bin 2x2, Gain 125 Offset 30

Total integration time 5 hours and 28 minutes

 

Emil

 

 

[geordie85]

You've got some beautiful star colour. What's your process? I'm struggling to get any blue in my m106 image

[Rustang]

Beautiful. 

[emyliano2000]

39 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

You've got some beautiful star colour. What's your process? I'm struggling to get any blue in my m106 image

Thank you. 

I originally did a Photometric colour calibration in pixinsight on the RGB stars. That gave me a pretty good colour from the start. The background didn't look great but it really didn't matter as I was only gonna use the stars from that blend. After that I flattened the background using GradX in photoshop, blackened it and added the Ha as the red channel and 10% luminance. Increased the overall saturation and with a blurred inverted star mask, I applied a few iterations of Noel Carboni's Increase star colour action. Some of the stars had a purple hue so I took it into Camera raw filter there I changed the purple hue to blue. 

Emil

[glafnazur]

I like that a lot, great image 👍