I was first drawn to this area by the blue ring (NGC2020) surrounding the Wolf-Rayet star Brey 48. Only after I started processing did I notice the famous Cosmic Reef in NGC 2014! Ignorance can lead to a sense of discovery in this hobby! I framed this knowing that there were several more NGC objects in the FOV. But, as integration time mounted, I kept seeing more and more interesting subjects. So kept shooting and ended up with 62 hours of integration time here.
I felt this might be a candidate for an RGB-SHO combination. The RGB data shows most of the SHO features but also shows some brownish dust between 2014 and 2020. This dust also appears below 2014. I tried to retain as much of that as I could but only hints remain.
Primarily, the data is SHO; combined using a dynamic factor based on the OIII data. Red is both SII and Ha with more SII in areas where the OIII is strong and more Ha where OIII is weak. Green is a mix of all three channels. An SII/Ha mix is used where OIII is strong and OIII is used where OIII is weak. The Blue channel is pure OIII. This mix allows more than two colors to come through and can highlight areas with differing mixes of wavelength. The palette has become known as "Foraxx" and you can find a detailed tutorial here:
https://thecoldestnights.com/2020/06/pixinsight-dynamic-narrowband-combinations-with-pixelmath/Most processing was done after star removal with StarXterminator. The stars themselves are RGB and were blended back in after processing on the nebula was complete. I blended the stars using this formula in Pixelmath: mtf(.005,mtf(.995,Stars)+mtf(.995, Starless)). This formula was provided to me by a user on the /r/astrophotography discord server but I believe the origin of the formula is
@Charles Hagen. Thanks for that!
There is so much in there - Please do view this at 100% and scroll around.
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