Quincey Senter. Taken on September 24th at 8:15pm. Three, five minutes exposures, taken with a ST2000 SCM telescope and twelve inch dome scope. It had a chip temperature of -18 and was +76 high in the sky. It was a dry night with no clouds or moon. All three images were dark frame corrected, with -18, and flat field corrected, using CCDOPS. After, it was converted to color with the sRGB+gamma method also on CCDOPS. All three images were stacked on Registax 5.1 using the default alignment method. Next the photo was edited on Photoshop CC. To reduce the grain, Space Noise Reduction was used twice and Deep Space Noise Reduction used once. To make the stars smaller, and pull focus on the nebula, Stars Smaller was used. To make the sky darker and nebula brighter, Curves was adjusted. To reduce the green and increase the blue stars, Saturation was adjusted. Lastly, Bandaid was used to smooth out the little smudges caused by the previous edits.

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(Victor) M11 (AKA the wild duck cluster)-Using the telescope Alex200
with 12 inch telescope. The camera that was used was the
ST2000XCM. Each photo of the three was dark subtracted in
CCDOPS. The chip temperature was -23.The next thing done to the image was flat-
field it. Last thing done was singles shot color correct. In
Registax we found the same star on all of the photos and align
them. In Registax we set the align box to 128 and put the
lowest quality to 0.Moved on to photoshop where we made the
stars smaller then increased the hue to about 15. Removed all the hot pixels. Sharpen mask then printed the image.

The Dumbbell Nebula (M27),Anika Compoginis,Astro-8a-Fall Semester 2019,3x-5min exposures taken on 10/1/19, 8:37 pm PST,Cabrillo College Observatory, Aptos CA,Using a 12" Meade LX200, ST 2000 Single Shot Camera., Sky conditions: Clear sky, no cloud coverage. Night cold and damp, chip temperature was -23 degrees, minimal light pollution, waxing moon had set.,3 images with 5 minute exposures each. CCDOPS5, dark frame correction -23°, flat field correction fall 2019, color process single shot color: SRGB+gamma transfer function, saved as TIFF file, stacked in Registax5 without image adjustments.,Photoshop: cropped to center image, levels to lessen red and green, decrease saturation for red and green, curves to balance image, increase brightness +4 and contrast +3, unsharp mask (x 3), clone stamp to remove colored hot pixels (x 12)Actions used in photoshop: light pollution removal, deep space noise reduction, less crunchy more fuzzy (x 2), increase star color, space noise reduction, make stars smaller (x 3), light pollution removal enhanced flatten.,Notes: Scope had some difficulty going to object and focusing, but desirable picture was achieved. The moon had set by the time pictures were taken. Three moon occultations happened that night. Altitude of object at the time picture was taken was +60°

Naia Skogerson 

The Crescent Nebula is NGC 6888, constellation of Cygnus. I took 3x5min exposures on October 29th, 2019 at 9:42pm using the telescope LX200 dome scope and ST2000xcm camera. The sky conditions were slightly smokey, windy, colorful sunset, decently clear and no moon. I later dark subtracted, flat field, and single-shot color processed in CCDOPS5, using sRGB+gamma transfer function and then saved the image as a 16bit TIFF file. Stacked in Registax5 without image adjustments. In photoshop I began with constructing RGB image from channel files and first synthesized green channel from red and blue. Then I used astronomy tools uI-6 PS CS.atn for light pollution removal, make stars smaller, space noise reduction to get rid of green and color blotch reduction. I also used ‘unsharp mask’ to reduce and sharpen stars, enhanced DSO to make nebula popout. In ‘adjustments’ I used ‘curves’ to help with excess green in my photo, then ‘filter’ and ‘noise’ to despeckle and finally changed ‘hue/saturation’ to saturation = -100 and lightness to -100 twice.

M13 - NGC6205 Oct 10, 2019. The seeing quality was medium. There was ambient light from a waxing gibbous moon, mild cloud coverage, and twinkling where clear. When improving the image through photoshop, the layers function was enacted to enhance the dark parts of the image and decrease the brightness of the bright parts. Additionally, the brightness was decreased in order to improve distinction among the stars in the center of the cluster. Next the curves command, followed by the hue and saturation command, helped to bring to focus as much of the base image as possible. The Make Stars Smaller function was executed twice; along with  Space Noise Reduction, Deep Space Noise Reduction, Light Pollution Removal, and then Make Stars Smaller function. After this, to clean up them image, the layers function was used again to clarify the image and background along with remove any green from the image and enhance the red and blue stars visible in the original image. Finally, the unsharp mask function was used to sharpen the final image and make it ready for presentation.