My 2018 attempt to bring an old image a step closer to perfection.
The old image is this one:
http://www.astrobin.com/250543/?image_list_page=2&nc=&nce=The nearly 50 hr of integration was taken between Apr 17 and Sep 14, 2015. However, certain areas in the old image suffer from high noise.
In 2018, I went back to Hawaii, with the only goal of improving this image. During six nights between June 9 and June 15, 2018, additional 15.2 hr of integration was acquired. The exposures were made in regions where the S/N was low. The image here is the result.
This is a 25-frame mosaic. Each frame receives at least 2 hr of integration. In some regions, the total integration can be as high as 5 hr.
The original image contains 610 mega pixels. The version uploaded here is a 0.35x reduction, to avoid crashing your browsers. A 0.5x, pan-zoomable version can be browsed here:
http://www.gigapan.com/embeds/omJXQKULt0MVer.E is an inverted B&W version. Images like this are always attractive to me. It does not only make the fainter nebulosity more apparent, but also brings nostalgia to me. It reminds me the old days when I work in the wet dark room to handle the B&W negatives.
Ver.G is an enhanced version, to better show the faint nebulas. It's created by blending the normal version and the starless version together.
For fun, I also uploaded a starless version (Ver.H), generated by Starnet++, with additional enhancements, to show the complex structure in the dust clouds.
Ver.I is an adjusted version, according to my current taste (May 2021). It's the new final.
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