Sleeping Wizard - starless NGC 7380 (dheilman)

Sleeping Wizard - starless NGC 7380

Sat on this data since January. I deviated from my typical tone mapping routine to try Nikita Misiura's wonderful neural network for star removal. Made quick work of this process and I was able to easily remove most of the artifacts by making a star mask using a difference layer in PS, then using a highlights selection of the stars followed by a content aware fill. I decided that I wanted to fully process a starless version so I still spent about 5 hours doing touch up work. The background is a bit mottled, which is typical for full star removal (I haven't found a way to fully smooth the background) and I tried to tastefully push this as far as I could. Part of the reason I wanted to go starless is that no matter how I oriented the image, I couldn't unsee the wizards face with that "eye" star there.

Version C is starless

Version B is with stars

NGC7380 is an open star cluster discovered in 1787 by Caroline Herschel. The surrounding Nebula is approximately 7200 light years distant and spans ~100 light years towards the constellation of Cepheus.

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Original
B
Final
C

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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Star trails
Northern lights
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
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Amateur hosting facility
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Other
Unknown

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2644660
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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