NGC 5139 Omega Centauri

NGC 5139 Omega Centauri

The brightest globular cluster in the entire sky. This image was taken years ago, when I was just getting into long-focal-length imaging and did not yet appreciate how much seeing matters at long focal lengths. None of the four channels got much exposure time, and the seeing was atrocious — so a globular cluster, whose whole appeal lies in its pinpoint stars, turned into a blur. Zoomed in, the star sizes differed between channels and the centers never quite registered; back then the processed result was simply unpresentable.

But it is 2023 now. Running BlurXTerminator experimentally actually straightened out those crooked, smeared stars. The result still cannot match what a good dataset would give, but for 90 minutes of data, this will do.

iTelescope T32
LRGB 180"*30sec
Total integration time: 1h30m