Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  16 Tau  ·  17 Tau  ·  18 Tau  ·  19 Tau)  ·  19 q Tau  ·  20 Tau  ·  21 Tau  ·  22 Tau  ·  23 Tau  ·  24 Tau  ·  25 Tau)  ·  25 eta Tau  ·  26 Tau  ·  27 Tau  ·  28 Tau  ·  AH Tau  ·  Alcyone  ·  Asterope  ·  Atlas  ·  Barnard's Merope Nebula  ·  Celaeno  ·  Electra  ·  FL Tau  ·  IC 349  ·  II Tau  ·  KZ Tau  ·  LBN 770  ·  LBN 771  ·  LBN 772  ·  LM Tau  ·  And 382 more.
Messier 45 "Pleiades" - November 2024, Paul Macklin
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Messier 45 "Pleiades" - November 2024

Messier 45 "Pleiades" - November 2024, Paul Macklin
Powered byPixInsight

Messier 45 "Pleiades" - November 2024

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

2-panel mosaic. 8 hours of 120" exposures on each panel. 16 hours total integration. 

Key details on processing workflow: 

Individual panels: 
  1. Typical integration in AstroPixelProcessor (here with lights, flats, dark flats, and darks)
  2. PixInsight steps:
    1. dynamic crop
    2. background neutralization (default settings)
    3. gradient correction (default settings, enable automatic convergence)

Mosaic: 
  1. AstroPixelProcessor steps:
    1. Analyze Stars (typically target = 1000 to 2000)
    2. Mosaic integration (scale 1 to 10, dynamic distortion correction enabled, same camera/optics disabled)
    3. Advanced normalization (disable "neutralize background")
    4. Integration (no LNC, MBB = 15%)

  2. PixInsight steps:
    1. Dynamic Crop
    2. Gradient Correction (same as above)
    3. BlurXTerminator (sharpen stars 0.5, adjust halos 0 to -0.25 as needed, sharpen nonstellar 1.00)

  3. APP step:
    1. Calibrate background (shouldn't do much)
    2. Calibrate star colors (adaptive black body on wideband, balance RGB on narrowband)
    3. Export / stretch to TIFF (typically 20% bg/3 sigma to 30% bg/2 sigma, saturation at 0.25, and don't neutralize background)

  4. Photoshop steps:
    1. adjust levels (mostly black point on each channel or lightness)
    2. adjust curves as needed (usually just linear, but depends what you want to emphasize)
    3. adjust hue/saturation as needed (by color as needed, typically little change on wideband)
    4. NoiseXTerminator (denoise 50%, detail 25%)
    5. Topaz Denoise AI (Severe noise, 5% denoise, 1% sharpen, 50% recover original detail)
    6. unsharp mask (1.5 to 2 px, 75% to 100%, maybe 150%)
    7. final curves and color tweaks

Prior attempts: 



Session details later today.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Messier 45 "Pleiades" - November 2024, Paul Macklin