Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster (Yunus Can Erol)

Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster

Untracked shot of the Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster.

Shot with Samyang 135 mm f/2.0 lens with a focal ratio of f/2.0

Best 779 frames out of the 1392 pictures I took this night. I used the score from DSS, which also correlates well with FWHM.

The nebulae are a little bit overprocessed, I was weak and I fell to the call of the dark side telling me to paint over the nebulae :|

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Process in PixInsight:
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
PhotometricColorCalibration
SCNR, Green, Amount:0.5
HistogramStretch
StarNet for separate star and nebulosity layers
I noticed here that there was a lot of red noise in the image, very close in intensity to the nebulosity I wanted to show.

Individual range masks for stars and starless images, then combine with PixelMath.

MultiscaleMedianTransform, applied to the background only using the mask.

Remove red tint with SCNR, Red, Amount:0.76

Protect the nebulosity with the starless mask, adjust the red curve. Invert mask, boost starless red curve.

Here's the cheeky part: to isolate only the nebulae in the starless image, I picked a dark-looking region and used the clone stamp tool to paint everything except the nebulae.

Stretch the image with only nebula and create a range mask, use the mask to bring up the red curve.

Back to the mask, blur with a large scale gaussian, apply to the image and perform final stretch. Blurring helps with sharp artifacts at the painted borders otherwise.

Finally, color balance in Photoshop.

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Final comment on the painting over nebulae thing; I know a lot of people use Photoshop to do this kind of thing all the time; I think it's not terrible as long as one doesn't try to hide it.

For now, I am prioritizing aesthetics over scientific accuracy mainly because otherwise my images would look very dull and I wouldn't feel motivated to continue.

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5364396
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster

Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster

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Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster

Heart and Soul Nebulae and Double Cluster

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