M 27 - Dumbell Nebula

Date/time:
30.05.2009 01:00 to 30.05.2009 03:30
31.05.2009 00:30 to 31.05.2009 02:30

Ambient conditions: 10°C, transparency 5/5, seeing 4/5,
on second night late clouds.
Location: Trier, Germany

Equipment:
Telescope: TMB 130 SS f/7 with TSFlat 2”
Mount: CGE
Guiding: selfguiding with ST-4000XCM  
Camera: SBIG ST-4000XCM
Filters: IDAS LPS

Acquisition:
Software: CCDSoft V5
FOV, Image scale: 57.2 x 57.2 arcmin, 1.68 arcs/pixel
Sub-exposures: 4h 15min (17 x 15min) lights at –20°C,
100 x 15min darks, 50 x 1s flats calibrated with 50 bias @-20°C

Processing:
Images Plus 3.8 Beta 2: Calibration, Stacking (Median combine), DDP (Break poin 1000, Background weight 0.92)
Background/Highlight Smoothing with  Max Luminance set on the area of most noise.

Photoshop CS3: GradientXterminator, Curves, Match Color and slight Unsharp Mask of nebula area only.

Comments:
A minimum of processing steps were done. The new noise reduction tool of IP 3.8 is very powerfull
and worked very well on this image. Since the processing was done on a non-calibrated laptop monitor,
no color adjustments were undertaken.