The Great Orion Nebula, Running Man Nebula, and surrounding dust. A personal best for me on these objects. First light for my Nikon D750. This camera is a huge improvement over my D3200 in terms of dark current, pattern noise, and amp glow - I look forward to capturing more DSOs! Captured from my back yard in Westover, PA on 1/3/19 - bortle class 4 skies.

**Equipment:**

* Nikon D750 (Stock)

* Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 AI-S ED lens

* f/2.8

* ISO 1600

* AstroTrac TT320X-AG - no guiding

* Induro CLT404L Tripod

**Acquisition:**

* 82 x 60" lights (82 mins. total integration time)

* additional subs for core detail - 3 x 20", 4 x 10", 8 x 4", 8 x 2", 8 x 1"

* 50 flats from archive

**Processing:**

*Lightroom/ACR (Raw file development):*

* imported raw .NEF files

* highlights -100

* adjusted tone curve for RGB channels to align black point

* blacks -10

* luminance noise reduction +15

* remove chromatic aberration

* magenta/blue/orange defringing

* export as 16-bit TIFs

*DeepSkyStacker:*

* import 16-bit TIFs

* added 50 flats from archive

* stacked with the kappa-sigma algorithm

* no background color calibration

* saved result as 32-bit floating point (rational) TIF with no DSS changes applied

*RawTherapee (For highlights reconstruction/recovery):*

* opened 32-bit TIF from DSS

* highlight reconstruction > color propagation

* exposure compensation -0.7

* highlight compression - 40

* highlight compression threshold - 0

* black - 0

* lightness - 0

* contrast - 70

* saturation - 0

* output as 32-bit floating point TIF

*RNC-Color-Stretch:*

* opened 32-bit TIF

* set power factor to 599/1/1

* color enhancement factor 1.0

* color correction off

* output as 16-bit PNG file

*Photoshop:*

* Convert PNG to TIF

* GradientXTerminator

* Crop

* HLVG plugin to remove green cast

* Purple Fringe Killer plugin applied selectively using mask

* Corrected oblong stars; select stars > apply offset filter > darken blend mode

* Created starless layer > stretched with curves to pull fainter dust forward

* Applied high pass filter to starless layer and blended

* Added luminosity layer; (copy image > LAB color > copy L channel > luminosity blend mode)

* various color balance, saturation, and contrast tweaks to taste

* save as PNG