M3 - Globular cluster

[ONIKKINEN]

The Globular cluster M3, 120x60s with an 8'' newtonian:

Taken under a full Moon on Thursday night under decent seeing but a little windy, although BXT hides the issues from this issue so no major issues with that. Flats did not work for this one, i suspect because of light leaks from the full Moon and the fact that i had set up on clear ice (alternative was to shovel half a meter of snow, no thank you) which would act like a mirror shining the very bright Moonlight through the bottom of the scope. The bottom was covered with a spandex/fabric type dust cap which is a little bit transparent, and i guess a bit too much light found its way through to ruin the flats. GraXpert rescued the image in the end and content aware fill removed some dust spots that remained.

Processing in PI and Photoshop, overall very simple to process apart from the bad flats trickery.

-Oskari

[Adreneline]

Very nice. Really like the subtle colours in the cluster. Adrian

[Roy Foreman]

Nice tight stars and good colour. Better than my efforts so far !

[ollypenrice]

Perfect - and you can't often say that about images of globulars. That really is tight, bright and controlled.

Olly

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, Roy Foreman said:

Nice tight stars and good colour. Better than my efforts so far !

34 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Perfect - and you can't often say that about images of globulars. That really is tight, bright and controlled.

Olly

The credit for the tight stars in the cluster should go to BlurXterminator for sure. The data isn't at all special at roughly 3.6'' fwhm.

Pre and post BXT below:

Not used BXT for globulars before, but looks like the tool is perfect for them based on this short image.

[ollypenrice]

3 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

The credit for the tight stars in the cluster should go to BlurXterminator for sure. The data isn't at all special at roughly 3.6'' fwhm.

Pre and post BXT below:

Not used BXT for globulars before, but looks like the tool is perfect for them based on this short image.

Interesting. I'll have another look at my own raw Glob data if I can still find it.

Olly