NGC 7380 - Wizard Nebula

NGC 7380 - Wizard Nebula: Known as the Wizard Nebula, this star forming region in the constellation Cepheus is approximately 8500 light years distant. It was discovered in 1787 by Caroline Herschel, the sister of astronomer William Herschel. This narrowband image uses the "Hubble Palette" of assigning the red channel to S[II], singly ionized sulphur, the green channel to the Balmer series Hydrogen alpha line, and the blue channel to O[III], doubly ionized oxygen.

NGC: 7380
Other Catalogs: Sharpless Sh2-142
Right Ascension: 22h 47m 21s
Declination: 58° 7' 54"
Apparent Magnitude: 7.2

Date: November 2023
Equipment:
Telescope: Planewave 14" CDK (Corrected Dall-Kirkham)
Camera: SBIG STX-16803
Filters: Astrodon 3nm
Guiding: Diffraction Limited SC-3 Long Off-axis guider/PHD2

Exposure:
H-alpha (2x2) 16x600s
O[III] (2x2) 20x600s
S[II] (2x2) 8x600s

Processing Notes: The images from these narrowband as well as the RGB photographic filtes were recorded with 2x2 binning. All colors were aligned and combined separately as the mean of all files, using CCDStack defaults, with the default data rejection. These combined files were then aligned in CCDStack with the luminance filter data, which was recorded using 1x1 binning, so they were automatically upscaled during this process. The original FIT files were converted to TIFF files using FitsLiberator with an asinh stretch. The individual channels were stretched in Photoshop using levels and curves. The dim areas received a Gaussian blur. Contrast was enhanced using a high-pass filter as a 50% overlay in a duplicate channel. The stars in the S[II] and O[III] channels were reduced slightly with a minimum filter. The various channels were then combined in Photoshop. Final levels and curves adjustments were made in Photoshop before the image was flattened and saved as a jpeg.
Scale: .74" per pixel

Additional Comments: This image was taken over the course of several nights. It still needs at least double the amount of S[II] data.

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