Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  IC 59  ·  IC 63  ·  LBN 620  ·  LBN 622  ·  LBN 623  ·  LBN 625  ·  Sh2-185  ·  gamma Cas nebula
The Ghost of Cassiopeia (HSO), Linda
Powered byPixInsight

The Ghost of Cassiopeia (HSO)

The Ghost of Cassiopeia (HSO), Linda
Powered byPixInsight

The Ghost of Cassiopeia (HSO)

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This data was acquired between 17 September 2021 and 5 October 2021. This is not my equipment but I'm helping a friend with a project and I get to process the data we collect so it's a win/win situation.

This was a humbling choice as a first target. Navi (the bright star just out of frame) left a huge halo and lots of reflections around the frame. I cropped out the worst of the reflections but even then, it was tough. I think I went a bit too far with noise reduction. The data required a large stretch and even with a large number of hours the noise was strong and I may have overstepped but I've reached the point of mental exhaustion on this one so am going to go with what I have for now.

I want to revisit this with at some point. I'm sure there is more that could be done with improved skills.

I chose the HSO palette because the it seemed appropriately "ghostly". Although an unmodified SHO was also in the running. I chose the final cropping to remove Navi but leave some of it's halo because I couldn't fully remove the halo, just dim it some and if I had to leave the halo in then the "ghost" looking up toward this unseen light was a composition choice that appealed to me. I guess I was trying to make some lemonade out of a very bright lemon (to mix a metaphor or two).

Here's the processing steps:

H, S and O:
dynamic crop
deconvolution
ABE
cloned the H and renamed the clone L
starXterminator (trying out a trial of the PI plugin)
histogram transformation
tgv denoise

HSO:
Channel Combination (HSO)
histogram transofmration to balance color channels
LRGBCombination to add L in as luminance

L
starXterminator extracting stars
histogram transformation
tgv denoise
LHE
Adv Sharpening script
pixel math in stars

stars
histogram transformation

Comments