NGC 1333 and Dust Clouds in Taurus

My main target from the trip to Marathon, Texas is finally processed. NGC 1333, a reflection nebula in the constellation Taurus, and its surrounding dust clouds. The first time I saw an image of this target a few months ago, I knew I had to try and capture it. Being completely broadband, I made sure to spend all 3 nights at the Marathon Motel and Sky Park imaging this curious, dusty region of the sky. I'm very satisfied with how it came out in the end.

 

- Total Exposure Time: 24.8 Hours

- Location: Marathon Motel and Sky Park in Marathon, Texas ( a Bortle 2 location)

 

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Equipment:

- Scope: AT65EDQ

- Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600mm-Pro

- Filters: Chroma LRGB

- Mount: Belt-modded Orion Sirius EQ-G (HEQ5 Pro)

- Guidescope: QHY MiniGuideScope

- Guide camera: QHY5L-ii mono

 

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Software:

- N.I.N.A for image acquisition, platesolving, and framing

- PHD2 for guiding

- PixInsight for processing

 

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Acquisition:

- L: 261 x 180"

- R: 77 x 180"

- G: 80 x 180"

- B: 78 x 180"

- 20 flats and dark flats per filter per night

- All images at gain 139 & offset 21

- Nights: 11/14, 11/15, 11/16/20

 

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Processing:

 

Preprocessing of all images:

- Calibrate all light files

- StarAlignment, ImageIntegration

- DrizzleIntegration of masters

 

Luminance:

- DynamicCrop

- AutomaticBackgroundExtraction bc impossible to find background for DBE (and ABE worked very well)

- TGV/MMT Noise Reduction via EZDenoise Script

- EZSoftStretch script to bring to non-linear

- RangeMask + LocalHistogramEqualization for reflection nebulosity detail recovery

- CurvesTransformation to reduce some contrast

 

RGB Processing (apply to each RGB master):

- DynamicCrop

- ABE

- Heavy TGV/MMT due to less integration time than Luminance

 

Combine RGB Masters:

- StarAlign R/G/B linear images to Luminance

- Combine RGB into color with ChannelCombination

- DynamicCrop to crop edges

- PhotometricColorCalibration

- EZSoftStretch to stretch RGB image

- SNCR Green

- ACDNR with boosted Luminance Mask to remove chrominance noise

 

Combine L and RGB:

- LRGBCombination with L weighted at 0.85 and saturation boost at 0.2

 

Further Processing:

- EZ StarReduction script using Adam Block's method to reduce star size

- CurvesTransformation for contrast/bringing out dark nebulosity

- ACDNR with Luminance Mask for luminance noise reduction

- CurvesTransformation using inverted StarMask for contrast and saturation boost

- Invert image -> SCNR Green -> Invert image back to remove magenta tone

- Further star reduction via StarMask and MorphologicalTransformation

- Save and export

 

Done