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California Nebula, Paul Macklin
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California Nebula

California Nebula, Paul Macklin
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California Nebula

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Just a fast test without calibration frames!  Honestly, I'm surprised this exploratory shot turned out so well! 

Extracted and stacked Ha and [OIII] separately, removed light pollution from each separately, then combined in HOO2 in AstroPixelProcessor with [OIII] at 2x. As always, save as 16 bits-per-pixel integers with stretching before moving on to photoshop. 

No star reduction this time around.

Here's a brief snapshot on how I postprocess after AstroPixelProcessor: 

1. Photoshop
  * Rotate and crop down to 3000x3000
  * Auto-tone
  * Auto-contrast
  * Auto-color (not always--look at impact on colors)
  * Brightness/contrast (auto, then manually adjust)
  * Levels (auto, then manually adjust. midtone never above 1.2)
  * Curves (try auto, but generally something like medium contrast)
  * Save
2. Topaz denoise
  * Severe profile, but see if you can reduce settings
3. Photoshop
  * Auto-tone
  * Auto-contrast
  * Save

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California Nebula, Paul Macklin