Here's one I keep shooting, but I think this is the first color image. M56 hits the imaging part of my tree-free sky at just the right moment each spring. I seem to collect light from it over and over.
M56 is about 33,000 light years from us and contains a mass of 230,000 suns! That's a lot. It rises with the constellation Lyra, after M57, and before Cygnus.
This image is 12x900" through the 203mm Synta-ONTC Newtonian at f/4.95 with the Atik 460EXC camera. The frames were taken between 2 and 5 am a few weeks ago.
2 comments:
A visually pleasing shot Val, did you change the image any since the "proof"?
M56 along with other globs that either hug the boundaries or nestle within the Milky Way always give the eyes much detail to look over. M71 is another one that you should visit.
Your one shot color images with the 694 chip make me question my choice in a mono chip camera.
Regards,
Bill
Thanks, Bill. I appreciate your feedback, both before and after. I did tone down the blue just a bit where it was standing out most. One thing the color camera data emphasizes is that star colors are mostly weak at best. To make them obvious at all, I have to strengthen them. I like to see what the data shows, so I think of this like underlining items on a chart. But that means I have to make a choice as to how strongly to show them. I don't want to erase data, so I want bluest to be more blue than bluer, which should be more blue than the faintly blue. And I want to show the relationships without unintentionally creating others that don't exist.
Yes, M71, M56's apparent neighbor and a cluster I've never produced a full image for! I always get stuck in Cygnus and Cepheus and ignore M71! Thanks for the kind words. I am learning various ways to make the images work.
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