Acquired 545x20s subs (= 181.67 mins). Taken from Washington D.C. on Mar. 10, 2026.
Put the Seestar in equatorial mode and did a polar alignment to less than a degree in both RA and Declination coordinates. Manual focus was done using a Bahtinov mask to achieve proper focus. Seestar LP filter*: Off.
PixInsight** (hereafter “PI”) was used to process the captured raw subs.
Integrated using PI to get a master image as follows: Ran FBPP (fast batch preprocessing) script, with drizzle enabled, on 545 raw (fit) captured files. FBPP processed all of them for a success rate of 100% of the captured raw subs.
Postprocessed the above master image as follows: Applied Gradient Correction > Blur Xterminator > Spectrophotometric Color Calibration*** > Blur Xterminator (again) > Delinearization by transferring image data from Screen Transfer Function to Histogram Transformation > Rotation > Dynamic Cropping. Created a mask using Range Selection. After masking the background applied Curves Transformation, Color Saturation, Local Histogram Equalization, and Noise Xterminator to the stars of the cluster. Each of these processes was applied in multiple steps as appropriate. SCNR was applied to lower green chromatic noise. Inverted the mask and on the background portion applied a Histogram Transformation to adjust the background’s shadows and midtones applied followed by Noise Xterminator. Rotation and Dynamic Crop was applied as needed.
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Acquired 545x20s subs (= 181.67 mins). Taken from Washington D.C. on Mar. 10, 2026.
Put the Seestar in equatorial mode and did a polar alignment to less than a degree in both RA and Declination coordinates. Manual focus was done using a Bahtinov mask to achieve proper focus. Seestar LP filter*: Off.
PixInsight** (hereafter “PI”) was used to process the captured raw subs.
Integrated using PI to get a master image as follows: Ran FBPP (fast batch preprocessing) script, with drizzle enabled, on 545 raw (fit) captured files. FBPP processed all of them for a success rate of 100% of the captured raw subs.
Postprocessed the above master image as follows: Applied Gradient Correction > Blur Xterminator > Spectrophotometric Color Calibration*** > Blur Xterminator (again) > Delinearization by transferring image data from Screen Transfer Function to Histogram Transformation > Rotation > Dynamic Cropping. Created a mask using Range Selection. After masking the background applied Curves Transformation, Color Saturation, Local Histogram Equalization, and Noise Xterminator to the stars of the cluster. Each of these processes was applied in multiple steps as appropriate. SCNR was applied to lower green chromatic noise. Inverted the mask and on the background portion applied a Histogram Transformation to adjust the background’s shadows and midtones applied followed by Noise Xterminator. Rotation and Dynamic Crop was applied as needed.
* Seestar S50’s built-in OIII 30nm / Hα 20nm duo-band light pollution filter.
** PixInsight Core Version 1.9.3 Lockhart, build 1646.
*** SPCC filter settings: Sony Color Sensor (R-, G-, B-) UV/IRCUT filter.