I
imaged these clusters with iTelescope
T21 on the night of April 26th with a waning gibbous moon in
the sky. M53 is on the right and NGC 5053 is on the left. I
created a two-image mosaic, each of which combines two five-minute exposures in the Red
filter, and three three-minute exposures in the Blue. I used SkyTools 3 to
plan the observation. In addition to calculating the best times to
expose, and giving me confidence that the observation could be
done in moonlight, SkyTools helped me determine that I should
expose deeper in the Red filter under these conditions to get a
more color-balanced image. The colors in these clusters are
naturally somewhat mild. The images were stacked via
DeepSkyStacker. All other processing was done in Photoshop. The green
channel is a 50-50 combination of the red and blue. In the bottom
images north is to the left and
east is down. The top image has been rotated arbitrarily.
SkyTools
3, because the astronomy matters.
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