The Double Cluster in Perseus - NGC 884 and 869


 
This was taken on the 7th of September 2012 from the Austerfield Observatory, as a test piece for a newly acquired Canon 550D, on the also newly acquired Takahashi FSQ106ED. The exposure was only 17x30sec, whereas my usual for this sort of subject would be an hour.
I used the camera's built-in feature for taking darks. The frames were acquired and pre-processed in Astroart, then finally processed in Photoshop. Colour had to be added for the blue stars and some of the red, but the large red ones had to be reduced in saturation. The focusing was done with the aid of Nebulosity and no sharpening was done in processing. Quite a mix of testing was done at the same time in this effort, and as is usual, there was more time spent on processing than on taking the frames. I'm reasonable pleased with the result, and particularly impressed with the tiny stars the combination seems to be able to produce.
Brian

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