It may not be as big or well known as the other well known cluster in Hercules (M13), but it sure looks nice. Captured over 4 nights in July/August 2024 from a Bortle 9 zone
Places where I host my other images:
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TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
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Orion Sirius EQ-G
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ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
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Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
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ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
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Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
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Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
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Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
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ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding
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Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 6 hours 55 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)
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Lum - 209x60"
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Red - 78x60"
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Green - 62x60"
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Blue - 66x60"
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Flats- 30 per filter
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24 JimmyFlats per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A.
PixInsight Processing:
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BatchPreProcessing (with premade JimmyFlats)
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StarAlignment
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ImageIntegration
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DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
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DynamicCrop
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DynamicBackgroundExtraction
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
Luminance:
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BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)
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ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear
RGB:
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ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image
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BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)
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SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
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HSV Repair
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ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear
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Curves to saturate it a little
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MLT for large scale chrominance noise reduction
Nonlinear:
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LRGBCombination with stretched L as luminance
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DeepSNR Noise reduction
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Several CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.
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Invert > SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove some greens and magentas
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More curves
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A little bit of noiseXterminator
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DynamicCrop in on the clustert
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Resample to 75%
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Annotation
NASA is still doing a seat exchange and launching Johnny Kim on the next Soyuz in March, but it looks like it’ll be just Russians on at least the next 2 Soyuz’s after that