M33 (Processed to bring out the dust lanes)

M33 (same as submitted 2010-01-01 but processed to show dust lanes better)
2009-11-17
Middlebury, VT
Constellation - Triangulum

Exp 10x8min (80 min total)
ISO 1600

North - right

10 inch f/5.6 (1407mm fl) Newtonian (Homemade with Coulter Optics)
Field of view: 0.90 x 0.60 deg.

Camera - Modified Canon Rebel XT (350D) (8 mega pixel) (modified by Hap Griffin)
with Orion Broadband Light Pollution Filter
Autoguider (Meade Pictor 201XT)

Temperature - 26 to 23 degree F
Transparency 20.7mag/arc sec (Sky Quality Meter)
Seeing 4 (1-10)

Stacking - Registax 5
Noise Reduction - Noise Ninja 2
Other - Picture Window Pro 5
Stacked images with darks and flats. Saved as 16 bit FIT (separate Red, Green and Blue files). Did histogram strecth on Red, Green and Blue images, did 2nd hist stretch on R, G + B, then noise eduction on R + B, hist stretch on R, G + B (took several tries on R and B to get the desired color balance and boost to H-alpha and young star cluster regions),
combined into color image, performed selective color correction, did noise reduction, increased saturation +5%. Addition histogram stretch. Re-balanced the color to bring out dust lanes by doing color curves histogram stretch.

M33_2009-11-17_10x8min_iso1600_10in_f5_27degDrk_R1r2NRr5_G1g2g3(27d)g3_B1b2NRb5-cc_NR-cc_NR-hist-cc-chist3-Large.jpg