Jewelbox (NGC4755), Mimosa and DY Crucis

[iceman]

Hi all

Here's an image taken back on the 1st March, of the Jewelbox and surrounds.

It's a combination of 17x 60s exposures and 6x 3-4 minute exposures, all @ ISO800 with the unmodded 350D + ED80 + WO 0.8x reducer.

My polar alignment wasn't very accurate so there's some elongated stars in the full version, but luckily the websize hides most of those nasties :thumbsup:

The diffraction spikes were created with some wool sticky-taped to the dewshield. it's all I could find at the time :)

I'm very happy with the colours in this shot - next time I'll stick to the 60s exposures and just do lots more of them. With long exposures, the jewelbox just gets washed out and completely saturated.

It's my first image of one my favourite open clusters in the sky, so I'm happy to have captured it finally.

Thanks for looking.

[iceman]

Here's a 1200px wide, 700kb less compressed version:

Jewelbox + surrounds (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/mygallery/albums/userpics/10001/20080301-jewelbox1200px.jpg)

[Dennis]

Very nice Mike - the new 1200px version shows off this region so much better than the smaller one in the 1st post, the detail being so much cleaner and more clear due to the higher resolution. The star colours are just beautiful - did you pump the colour or saturation?

Cheers

Dennis

[Zuts]

Hi Mike,

The background stars look great. My only thought is that with something as small as the jewel box then unless you are at a very long focal length it is beter without the diffraction spikes as they tend to bunch up in the small cluster of stars.

Maybe a smaller crop would bring them out better.

Paul

[erick]

And Murphy has his way - DY Crucis is almost under a diffraction spike! :(

I always love the Jewel Box. Nice image, Mike!

[tornado33]

Beautiful image there, another very rich starfield
Scott

[leon]

Nice one Mike, some real fresh colours in that one, it is a top image, well done.

Leon

[Ric]

Great looking image Mike and how rich is that starfield.

Top stuff

[EzyStyles]

beautful shot there mike heaps of colours in the stars.

[iceman]

Thanks guys, appreciate the comments.

[multiweb]

Very cool Mike. What did you stack the subs with and how did you deal with noise on the 3-4 minutes subs?

[iceman]

Hi Marc.
I used ImagesPlus for flats calibration and align TSR and combine (adaptive add stack).

I used Photoshop for noise reduction. I used ICNR for darks.