Deep Ha Exposure on Flaming Star (AE Aur) (David McClain)

Deep Ha Exposure on Flaming Star (AE Aur)

Raw frames courtesy of Deep Sky West Remote Observatory in New Mexico, USA. (deepskywest.com) Data obtained with FSQ 106EDXiii / QSI683wsg / Lodestar / Paramount MyT.

24 hrs total integration (16x900s R, 16x900s G, 16x900s B, 17x900s L, and 16x1800s H-alpha). The palette is RGB with H-alpha serving as both color contribution in R and 20% B (for presumed H-beta), and partial Luminance.

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Revision C:

Frankly, I find the field stars are just too much. So here is a remix with 2% H-alpha in the blend, and intensity modulated by H-alpha to really deemphasize the field stars.

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Revision D:

Revision shows an attempt to stay in the LRGB domain (sans H-alpha), and use linear processing as far as possible, including the removal of field stars. It looks like removing field stars while still in the linear domain leads to more controllable outcomes, and fewer artifacts.

The image was separated into background nebula and foreground star images by using an iterative wavelet domain separation in fractional steps. The amount removed from each stage was accumulated into a star image. Then one round of gentle star elimination was performed on the final accumulated star image. The resulting stars and nebular background were recombined in the linear domain, and then a MaskedStretch was applied to reach the nonlinear domain without bloating the star images. Thereafter, the usual curve stretches were applied, along with noise removal.

This is enormously better than version B, and we didn't have to resort to H-alpha luminosity carving of star images.

Original
B
C
Final
D

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1111647
PixInsight job	n/a
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