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).
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
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:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration per channel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
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