I started imaging this target right after finishing the
Dolphin Head Nebula which is at -23 degrees declination and was already high in the sky at sunset. So I was plesantly surprised by how quickly I was able to gather 40+ hours of data on this target. It had not occurred to me how much the declination and timing the start of data collection can affect the rate of quality data collection.
I used 2x drizzle when stacking, which required a huge hard disk cleanup effort to find enough scratch space prior to stacking. I think the L channel took 45 minutes in Siril and I had to delete the intermediate files before moving onto the next channel. When compositing in Photoshop, I experimented with a tone map for the Ha data so it didn't just replace red. I don't see a big difference considering the integration time required to gather it, but it was mostly gathered when the moon was out so it didn't take time from other channels. Still need to refine my galaxy post-processing steps, but I seem to be making progress and learning something new each time.
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