1 stack of 35 60s images, Canon 800D at ISO 800, Canon 400mm f5.6 lens at f6.3, iOptron Skyguider Pro tracker. 50 darks, 120 biases. Processed in PixInsight as below

***** Integration

lightvortexastronomy tutorial (https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-pre-processing-calibrating-and-stacking-images-in-pixinsight.html)

* CC defect list + master dark (sigma = 8)

15*(1-(FWHM-FWHMMin)/(FWHMMax-FWHMMin))

+ 35*(1-(Eccentricity-EccentricityMin)/(EccentricityMax-EccentricityMin))

+ 20*(SNRWeight-SNRWeightMin)/(SNRWeightMax-SNRWeightMin)

+ 30

img 0713 ref

* ESD integration

* drizzle integration, circular kernel, area containing the galaxies

*****Linear processing

*** Initial

* Crop

* DBE tolerance 3, manually placed points outside the dust clouds

* CC using a dust cloud as background, background ref upper limit 0.0025

*** Denoise

Using https://jonrista.com/the-astrophotographers-guide/pixinsights/effective-noise-reduction-part-2/ as implemented by EZSuite.

* TGV edge protection 5e-5, default MMT

***** Nonlinear processing

*** Initial stretch

* MaskedStretch

* extract luminance, histo stretch shadows 0.06 mids 0.02, use as mask

* range mask 0.3, smoothness 9, apply, boost saturation

* ACDNR: create star mask (save, will use later), curves boost, dilate x 2 convolve x2, apply to main image. ACDNR on chrominance only, w/ lightness mask, 4 stdev 6 iterations

*** Colors

* CC with white ref upper limit 1 and background ref upper limit 0.2

* invert, SNCR green 0.8 to fix magenta background hue, invert again

* SNCR green 0.8

*** Stars

* Using a copy of the star mask, reduce using EZReduce, morphological transformation

* extract luminance, curve to get white stars and dark background, use as mask, unsharpmask 0.7

*** Other processing

* break down image in starless and stars, erase dust marks from starless, sum starless and stars back to the old image

* Duplicate, LHE kernel 512 contrast limit 1.5, slight contrast curve in RGB/K and sat boost, 0.5 blend with original

* denoise using https://jonrista.com/the-astrophotographers-guide/pixinsights/effective-noise-reduction-part-2/ as implemented by EZSuite. TGV edge protection 2e-2, default MMT

* MMT sharpen 6 layers biases 0.025 0.5 0.025 0.025 0.012 0.005