ASTRO: NGC 7129

What with no imaging weather here for over 2 months I went back and
reprocessed an image from my "Blue Period". Back then I wasn't properly
compensating for the high blue sensitivity of my camera so the images
from then were way too blue. Also I made things worse here not
realizing how deep in dust this object was. That dust reddened all the
stars which I proceeded to "correct" by increasing the blue channel even
more! Since then I've seen several wide angle shots of the region taken
with large astrographs that show how reddened these stars are by the
dust. I think this color balance is far better than the original even
if the stars seem way too red. It would make more sense if the
obscuring dust was more visible in the image. It needs several times
the exposure time I gave it. Even the Herbig-Haro objects are rather
under exposed. Still, with reprocessing, I've managed to bring out a
lot of detail and color not in the original image. If the weather
cooperates I'll try again with many hours of exposure time to pick up
the faint regions missed here. Also this was taken when I was using 5
minute sub frames. Since then I've found I get better signal to noise
ratio when using 10 minute subs on faint objects like this one. Errors
like this are all part of the learning curve.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=3x5', all images binned 2x2, STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick

--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

That is a weird object, nice work Rick.


John N. Gretchen III
N5JNG NCS304
http://www.tisd.net/~jng3

Great picture Rick, I only have that one in b/w. Looks much nicer in colour.

Stefan

Rick, just saw your NGC 4088 on spacebanter.com, it didn't make it to my
newsserver (which also missed your NGC 7129). Mighty image, I'm especially
impressed with the detail in the tiny face-on barred spiral to the lower
left of the main object.

Stefan