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3 comments

  • Ooh, that's my cousin. Hi. 😊

  • After months of clouds and rain, I had a clear night and went out to a dark site! I shot this a few years back in narrowband which helped show the faint outer shell, but this time I decided to photograph it in true color LRGB. Captured on July 26th, 2025 from a bortle 3 zone (deerlick astronomy village).

    Places where I host my other images:

    Flickr | Pixelfed

    Equipment:

    • TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
    • Orion Sirius EQ-G
    • ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
    • Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
    • ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
    • Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
    • Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
    • Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
    • ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
    • Moonlite Autofocuser

    Acquisition: 2 hours 50 minutes (Camera at -15°C), halfunity gain

    • L - 31x120"
    • R - 19x120"
    • G - 18x120"
    • B - 17x120"
    • Darks- 30
    • Flats- 30 per filter

    Capture Software:

    • Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

    PixInsight Preprocessing:

    • BatchPreProcessing
    • StarAlignment
    • Blink
    • ImageIntegration per channel
    • DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
    • Dynamic Crop
    • DynamicBackgroundExtraction

      duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

      $T * med(model) / model

    Luminance Linear:

    • Blur and noisexterminator
    • ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

    RGB Linear:

    • ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B images in to single color image
    • SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
    • BlurXterminator (correct stars only)
    • HSV Repair
    • ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
    • Slight saturation curve boost

    Nonlinear Processing:

    • LRGBCombination to combine stretched RGB and L images
    • NoiseX again (more for chrominance noise)
    • LocalHistogramEqualization
    • Several rounds of curve adjustments for lightness, contrast, saturation, color balance, with various masks
    • Resample to 80%
    • Tighter crop in on just the nebula
    • Annotation

  • I wish I could give you more than 1 upvote for including all the details. Great result, thanks for sharing.