M1-67 & WR124 (2013)

Today I was once again humbled to learn about a gaping hole of ignorance in my knowledge of processing.

The cosmic rays for this image were so odd and perplexing to me that I sent an email to STSci asking about it. After exchanging a few insightful emails, Rick White helped me understand that something may have gone wrong with the stacking for the combined images I used to create the previous version of this image and that I could manually combine them myself for better results.

This is it. The difference is astonishing. Not only that, but it’s a lot easier to stack the exposures properly than it is to try to remove the cosmic rays in a bad stack.

Level up!

The list of files I used this time is extensive. Rather than list them, I’ll just tell you to search the HLA for WR124 and limit it to level 1 data. I used most of the ones with a long exposure time.

North is NOT up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.