Trip to Atacama, Chile, May 2012
Object description
[b]Wikipedia[/b] The Dark Doodad Nebula is a dark nebula located near the globular cluster NGC 4372, having a length of nearly three degrees. The NGC 4372 is partially obscured by dust lanes, but still appears as a large object some 10 arcseconds in diameter. Although officially unnamed, this long molecular cloud has become to be known under this name. It can be found in the southern constellation of Musca (the Fly) with strong binoculars. It consists of regions of dents, gas and dust. This cloud is one of the closest star forming regions to the solar systems. Alan Whitman, from the Astronomical Society of New South Wales, has described this as one of the finest dark nebulae—one that is "wonderful, winding, and very definite." Beside the southern end of the Dark Doodad is the globular cluster NGC 4372.
Processing description
[b]Preprocess[/b]
DeepSkyStacker, using sigma clipping addition (kappa=2, sigma=5)
[b]Postprocess[/b] done under Pixinsight
Crop + BackgoundNeutralization (th=0.25)
Star-size reduction at linear step, using starMask + MorphologicalTransform (Erosion 70%)
ColorCalibration (4 corner zones, aggregated)
HistogramTransform
ACDNR (wit default lightness mask, sigma Lum = 3, sigma Chrom = 4) + SCNR Green
StarSize reduction at non linear step using the
Rogelio Bernal Andreo method[see](
http://blog.deepskycolors.com/archive/2011/09/08/star-size-reduction-via-Morphological-.html)
AutomaticBackgroundExtraction (should have been done at non linear step, yet enhanced the final image)
Saturation boost using starMask2 (built through ATrousWavelets) and CurvesTransformation
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