This is my latest version of the Globular Cluster, M3, located 34,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. I decided to image this again since it was in a great location and the moon was out and it has been three years since my last version. Containing more than 500,000 stars M3 also has the distinction of having more variable stars than any other cluster in our galaxy. A variable star is one in which the brightness changes periodically with time and M3 contains at at least 274 of them.
I cropped this quite a bit since I used a 115mm refractor but I kind of liked how the bright orange double star B-pm-151 in the lower right came out so not too much. Also visible is a small edge-on galaxy, NGC 5263, on the center right located 226 million light-years away. This came out much better than I was expecting but there is much room for improvement especially around the edge of the cluster.
I only collected a total of 4.2 hours of RGB data for this but captured much more than that amount. I am actually happy though because over the last couple of images I have become more fastidious with subframes and have a new routine. My new regime is: 1) remove obvious bad subframes visually, 2) use PixInsight Subframeselector, and 3) a final visual check. I did not do any luminosity as I honestly just ran out of time. I started this last month when the moon was out, then horrible weather came, then we finally got a break and I was able to finish but my frames were so much better without the moon I decided to add better RGB data.
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Dates: 4-23, 4-27, 5-1, 5-8, 5-16
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: R 93 x 60, G 87 x 60, B 76 x 60
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 15 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.
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