Western Veil and Pickering's Triangle (OSC) (Linda)

Western Veil and Pickering's Triangle (OSC)

Revision title: 2023 Reprocessing

Link: https://lindasastronomyadventures.space/2018/10/15/western-veil-nebula/

The description immediately following is from my 2023 reprocessing. The original 2018 comments are at the bottom

2023 Reprocessing:

I'll answer my question below about over processing with a resounding "yes!". My 2018 version is probably the worst image I ever produced. It was only 3h or data from an SQM 19 location. I didn't yet understand how hard data could reasonably be pushed. My comprehension of the tools was fairly rudimentary at this point. It's an image that makes me cringe to look at. After doing a fair amount of reprocessing lately, I decided to have look at this one to see if I could make it less awful and maybe even pleasant to look at. Thankfully the answer was again, "yes!". Don't get me wrong - the data can only be pushed so far but I have a better handle on what that means and I've suppressed that urge to try to bring out every detail possible in favor of an approach that is more (hopefully) aesthetically pleasing. Here's what I did:

DBE
SPCC
BXT
SXT
NXT
GHS (GH, linear, GH)
LHE
Curves (contrast & color)
MLT (sharpening)
pixel math in stars (screen)

stars:
GHS

This is the original 2018 description:
This is the central and western veil nebula, part of the much larger Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant.

This was a major challenge to process. First the guiding wasn't great and my stars tended to be elongated in RA. I've tried at least four different ways of processing this before settling on this. I'm not sure that I haven't gone overboard. I like the contrast the amount of detail I brought out but the stars seem fairly mangled, especially the small ones.

Processing steps:

Dynamic Crop

DBE

ABE

PCC

MLT (luminance noise reduction)

MLT (chrominance noise reduction)

Masked Stretch
Local Histogram Equilization (using a nebulosity only mask that was a bit of a pain to create)

3 or 4 rounds of MT to shrink stars

SCNR - red (only in background)

SCNR - green (only in background)

Curves Transformation for contrast

Curves Transformation for saturation

some final touch ups and sharpening in photoshop

Comments welcome! Did I over process in my quest to bring out the faint detail?

Original
B
C
Final
D

B

Description: This was a less aggressive reprocess that helped keep the stars and background under control.

In this version I did a masked stretch on two copies. The first was a normal masked stretch but on the second, I made a nebula and a few brighter stars mask and did the masked stretch with that mask in place. Then I combined the two with pixel math which made a nice compromise between detail and the stars taking over.

From there a nebulosity-only mask for some less aggressive local histogram equalization and then some curves adjustments (contrast and saturation).

Finally, export to photoshop for some last tweaks including fixing the saturated 52 Cygnii.

Overall, I think this is a more satisfying version and hopefully this time I'm really done with this one.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: This version does a bit more star reduction.

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: 2023 Reprocessing

Description: Same data but five years improvement in both me and the tools.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	FFW3VHTZVL5N06P4AJK1WELUO8I7YDKW
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h47m54s.35
RA (top/left)	20h52m54s.72
RA (top/right)	20h49m38s.86
RA (bottom/right)	20h42m48s.56
RA (bottom/left)	20h46m12s.37

Dec (center)	+30°45′14″.1
Dec (top/left)	+29°55′17″.6
Dec (top/right)	+32°03′54″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+31°34′20″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+29°26′28″.10

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