This is another image from telescope live – a widefield of the Perseus region, including IC 328 and NGC 1333. It was a pretty tough dataset to work with, as there were a ton of gradients that were hard to get rid of. I decided to try SPCC in pixinsight on this dataset, and it seems to work pretty well. I couldn’t notice a really significant different between PCC and SPCC, but SPCC seems to work faster for me.
IC 348 is a star-forming region in the constellation Perseus located about 315 parsecs from the Sun. It consists of nebulosity and an associated 2-million-year-old cluster of roughly 400 stars within an angular diameter of 20″. The most massive stars in the cluster are the binary star system BD+31°643, which has a combined spectral class of B5. Based upon infrared observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope, about half of the stars in the cluster have a circumstellar disk, of which 60% are thick or primordial disks.
The age of this cluster has allowed three low mass brown dwarfs to be discovered. These objects lose heat as they age, so they are more readily discovered while they are still young.
NGC 1333 is a reflection nebula located in the northern constellation Perseus, positioned next to the southern constellation border with Taurus and Aries. It was first discovered by German astronomer Eduard Schönfeld in 1855. The nebula is visible as a hazy patch in a small telescope, while a larger aperture will show a pair of dark nebulae designated Barnard 1 and Barnard 2. It is associated with a dark cloud L1450 (Barnard 205). Estimates of the distance to this nebula range from 980–1,140 ly (300–350 pc).
This nebula is in the western part of the Perseus molecular cloud and is a young region of very active star formation, being one of the best-studied objects of its type. It contains a fairly typical hierarchy of star clusters that are still embedded in the molecular cloud in which they formed, which are split into two main sub-groups to the north and south. Most of the infrared emission is happening in the southern part of the nebula. A significant portion of the stars seen in the infrared are in the pre-main sequence stage of their evolution.
Image:
Full-quality image here: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52743130425_af88f833fa_o.png
Annotated Image:
Full-quality image here: https://theastroenthusiast.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/NGC1333_annotated.jpg
Details:
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4 with 0.73x focal reducer
Camera: FLI PL16083
Filters: Astrodon LRGB 2GEN
Location: IC Astronomy, Oria, Almería, Spain
Date of Observations: 1/29/2022, 2/31/2022, 9/5/2022, 9/6/2022, 10/2/2022,
L: 12 x 600s (2h)
R: 12 x 600s (2h)
G: 12 x 600s (2h)
B: 12 x 600s (2h)
Processing: Pixinsight
Credits: Data: Telescope Live; Processing: William OstlingProcessing:
Pre-processing and Stacking:
- Images were cosmetic corrected for hot pixels
- The subframes were weighted, registered, normalized, integrated, and drizzled in WBPP
Preparation of all frames:
- Stacking artifacts were cropped
- RGB Channels were combined to create an RGB image
- RGB image was plate solved
- Starless DBE was applied to L, RGB as follows:
- Starnet 2 was applied to a clone of the target image, creating an image with stars and an image without stars
- DBE was applied on the starless image to create a background model
- The background model was subtracted from the stars image
- the RGB image was photometrically color calibrated and clipped H values were fixed with the repaired HSV separation script
Deconvolution of the luminance
- a PSF was created using the dynamic PSF process
- Linear starnet was applied to create a starless image and a star mask
- the linear image was duplicated, stretched, clipped, and convoluted to create a mask
- The starless image was deconvoluted using the RVC algorithm
- the stars were added back in
Noise Reduction:
- A low contrast mask was created and applied to the luminance image
- Noise Xterminator was applied with strength 73 and detail 0
- DeepSNR noise reduction was applied to RGB
Stretching Preparation:
- The L and RGB images were made starless using Starnet 2
Stretching:
- The Luminance image was stretched using HT and GHS
- The RGB image was stretched using ArcsinH and GHS
Non-linear adjustments
- Saturation adjustments on RGB
- LRGB combination
- HDR MST
- Saturation adjustment
- MLT sharpening
- Stars are stretched and added
- Dark structure enhancement
- Star reduction
- slight non-linear reduction
- MMT sharpening