Not having captured anything since August due to poor weather, I have spent time improving my post processing knowledge in Pixinsight and Photoshop. This reprocess  (although first time on Astrobin) of The Rosette Nebula incorporates a new technique (for me) called Luminance Masking. The creation of Light, Dark and Mid Luminance masks of differing levels allow selective adjustment layers to selectively pull out the darker areas without overexposing the rest. It’s what we try to achieve anyway but this technique allows much greater control.

Additionally I wrote my first Action Set in Photoshop to recreate these masks, plus Curve and Vibrance adjustment layers from each mask with just one click. As they say - Every cloud has a silver lining! We have certainly had plenty of cloud for sure. 

SH2-275, The Rosette Nebula, lies about 5,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros the Unicorn, and is about 130 light-years across. The Nebula, contains enough gas and dust to make about 10,000 stars like our Sun.  In the centre of the nebula is a cluster of hot, bright young stars.  These are warming up the surrounding gas and dust, making it appear bluer.  The small, bright white regions are cocoons of dust in which huge stars are currently being born. These “protostars”, each one of which will probably become a star up to ten times more massive than the Sun, are heating up the surrounding gas and dust and making it glow brighter. Just as the centre of the nebula contains bright young stars, in a few tens or hundreds of millions of years these stars will have died, but the protostars will have evolved into fully-fledged stars in their own right.  In this way, the star formation will move outwards through the nebula. 

Shot January 28 and 31 2022.  Seeing wasn’t great with a strong jet stream and clouds on the 31st, so shot short exposures to dance between the clouds dumping the worst frames.  
Sii 300s x 15 plus 60s x 20
Ha 300s x 17 plus 60s x 20
Oiii 300s x 15 plus 60s x 20
RGB Stars 20+20+20 x 60s 
5.9 hours total 
Astromiks 50mm SHO 6nm and RGB Filters
30 x Darks, Flats (for each narrowband filter) and Bias
ZWO ASI6200MM Pro at 100 gain, -5C
ZWO 7x2" EFW
ZWO EAF
Williams Optics GT81 IV
WO 6A III Field Flattener 0.8
HEQ5 Pro Rowan
ASIAIR Pro
Astro Pixel Processor
Pixinsight
Photoshop 2022