NGC 1333 Perseus Stellar Nursery (Patrick Graham)

NGC 1333 Perseus Stellar Nursery

My attempt at this beautiful reflection nebula in the constellation of Perseus. This is a highly active star forming region only 1000 light years distant. NGC 1333 contains the dark nebulae, Barnard 1 and 2. Even with 10 minutes sub exposures, it was difficult to bring out the dark nebulae that contrasts nicely with the brighter star forming regions. The main cluster consists of about 150 stars with an average age of 1 million years, according to Wikipedia.

I've made a few errors in acquisition and processing. Most prominent is the amp glow from my ZWO 183MC. I've tried to eliminate most of the glow by aggressively cropping the image at the expense of detail and lower resolution; but a few dim tendrils still remain visible. I think the issue can be attributed to the longer exposure time and possibly the USB 3 cable supplied with the camera. In total honesty, I discovered I was using dark frames of 300 seconds instead of 600 seconds for calibration. I've learned this does make a difference in removing all the amp glow. I also swapped out the USB3 for a higher quality cable and this eliminated the amp glow in acquiring subsequent targets with the proper dark frame calibration. I'll continue to work on this and will submit revisions as necessary. I'm also still learning some of the newer processes such as the NXT, BXT and GHS. I find these tools really streamline the process of attaining high quality images with minimum guesswork and experimentation.

All in all, its been a fun and educational project. As always comments and critiques are welcomed and encouraged. Thanks for taking a look!

CS,

Pat

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Well, Got the amp glow streaks out but the SPCC made the large nebulosity more indigo than blue. Didn't expose long enough to get the surrounding dust fields to show without being grainy, so I ended up clipping just a bit. Overall, I like it.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6972288
PixInsight job	XAC8UOLMZ0RYM8BT55ENJWO7QCYLW6TR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h29m18s.19
RA (top/left)	03h31m04s.41
RA (top/right)	03h30m07s.10
RA (bottom/right)	03h27m31s.30
RA (bottom/left)	03h28m29s.85

Dec (center)	+31°23′09″.9
Dec (top/left)	+31°04′20″.9
Dec (top/right)	+31°50′44″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+31°41′53″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+30°55′33″.9

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