Technical Information:
HaLRGB: 460:705:180:180:240 (a total of over 29 hours of light-frame exposure time); here's a chart showing the various subexposures I used in the image:
Hydrogen Alpha: 23 twenty-minute images
Luminance: 43 fifteen-minute and 20 three-minute
Red: 12 fifteen-minute
Green: 12 fifteen-minute
Blue: 12 twenty-minute
The luminance layer is a HDR blend of the 15-minute images and the three-minute images.
The red channel is a blend of the red data and the Ha data.
The green channel is made up entirely of the green data.
The blue channel is made up entirely of the blue data.
Equipment: RC Optical Systems 14.5 inch Ritchey-Chrétien carbon fiber truss telescope, with ion-milled optics and RCOS field flattener, at about f/9, and an
SBIG STX-16803 with internal filter wheel (SBIG filter set), guided by an SBIG AO-X/STX Guider, all riding on a Bisque Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount.
Image Acquisition/Camera Control: Maxim DL, controlled with ACP Expert/Scheduler, working in concert with TheSky X Professional Edition.
Processing: All images calibrated (darks, bias and sky flats), aligned, and combined in Pixinsight. Color combine in Pixinsight. Some finish work (background neutralization, color
calibration, deconvolution with BlurXTerminator; noise reduction using NoiseXTerminator, gradient removal, and blending the Ha data with the broadband data) done in Pixinsight;
some finish work (LRGB combination, contrast and saturation adjustment) was done in Photoshop CC.
Location: Data acquired remotely from Sierra Remote Observatories, Auberry, California, USA.
Date: Images taken on many nights during March and April of 2026. Image posted October 3, 2026.
Date: Image scale of full-resolution image: 0.56 arcseconds per pixel.
Seeing: Generally good
CCD Chip temperature: -25C
