Betelgeuse

Target details

Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) is the red star at Orion's shoulder, the second brightest in the constellation and the ninth brightest in the whole sky. It's a red supergiant: put where the Sun is, its surface would reach past the asteroid belt, swallowing the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and possibly Jupiter. Its brightness wanders between magnitude 0.0 and 1.3. About 640 light-years away and less than 10 million years old, it's a runaway star, ploughing through space at 30 km/s with a bow shock over four light-years wide ahead of it. It's expected to explode as a supernova within the next million years.

Capture details

Data captured 17th February, 2018.
13x 30 second exposures with Blue filter.
13x 30 second exposures with Green filter.
16x 30 second exposures with Red filter.

Equipment details

Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF
NEQ6 Pro
Atik 428EX Mono
Skywatcher ST-80
QHY5L-II

Processing details

This image was processed in Pixinsight & Lightroom.
Calibration and Stacking in Pixinsight using Batch PreProcessing.
Channel Combination - To combine RGB channels.
Photometric Colour Calibration - To calibrate colours.
SCNR - To remove green cast.
Multiscale Linear Transform - Noise reduction. (Each Channel)
Histogram Transformation - To stretch the image.
Histogram Transformation - To Clip Blacks.

Export as JPEG and import into Lightroom.
Contrast Boost (+20)
Clip Blacks (-50)
Increase Saturation (+10)

Export final JPEG for upload.