Learn

      • Blog
      • Academy
      • About us
      • Forum

      Legal

      • Privacy Policy
      • Cookie Policy
      • Terms & Conditions

      Pricing

      • Plans

      Tutorials

      • All tutorials
      • Our tutors
      • Webinars

      Follow us

      • Facebook
      • Instagram
      NGC 2264 The Christmas Tree Nebula
      Wallpaper author:
      George Yendrey

      25 Dec 2023

      NGC 2264 The Christmas Tree Nebula

      This is a Telescope Live dataset, acquired by the SPA-1 OTA in Spain (a Takahashi 106FSQ) and its new QHY600M camera.f

      This is an OHS Palette image.

      I also worked through the new recommended workflow for the V2/Ai4 Blur Exterminator tool from RC Astro. The improved tool does provide better star shapes when aberrations are present, but as Russ Croman noted, the most obvious effects are in poorer datasets. Good quality image sets will not appear to change as much, which is the way it should be. The new workflow for monochrome imaging is to apply BXT with "Correct Only" to the RGB/SHO/etc master frames BEFORE combining the channels and applying color correction, specifically SPCC since it uses the astronomic solution to tune its color correction algorithm. The reason for doing this is the Correctly only option fixes most of the star aberrations which helps SPCC to plates solve faster/more accurately. Once color correction has been applied, BXT is applied again with the Correct Only unchecked.

      Also improved is the auto PSF function of the AI. In the AI2, better results were found when the user manually determined the PSF of the image to be corrected. In the new AI4, the AutoPSF functions as originally intended and provides the best results. Adam Block has posted a YouTube video of an interview with Russ Croman with many of the improvements demonstrated on Adam's datasets.

      Dataset from which the image was processed

      NGC 2264

      4 credit

      Open
      Telescope Live
      SPA-1-CMOS
      • Type of target
        ............................................................................................................................
        Emission Nebula
      • Camera
        ............................................................................................................................
        QHY 600M
      • Target coordinates
        ............................................................................................................................
        RA 100.2167 Dec 9.8667
      • Hemisphere
        ............................................................................................................................
        Northern
      • Telescope location
        ............................................................................................................................
        Spain
      • Transient event
        ............................................................................................................................
        No
      • Observed on
        ............................................................................................................................
        21 Feb 2023 - 14 Apr 2023
      Filter
      Avg Exp (s)
      Total Exposure
      Subframes
      Luminance30050m10
      Red30050m10
      Green30050m10
      Blue33350m9
      Halpha7671h55m9

      NGC 2264 The Christmas Tree Nebula