This image really pushed me out of my comfort zone, as I've never processed dark nebula before. Due to my light pollution, I am used to processing mostly narrow band images and a couple bright galaxies with lots of empty space around them for easy background correction.
If I went too far with the stretch and/or amount of noise reduction, please let me know. I really have no idea what to expect given the data quality and I am open to suggestions for improvement. The data is a combination of LRGB acquired during new Moon period when the object was close to zenith, and H-alpha data which I captured before summer. A link to my FITS files can be found below the image title.
Original: LRGB without luminance noise reduction
Rev. B: HaLRGB processed with Starnet++ and an extreme stretch of the background with Power of Inverted Pixels (PIP) + MLT noise reduction.
Rev. C/D: toned down versions of Rev. B, mixed in the original LRGB + Ha.
The large scale details seem to be correct when I compare my data to deep reference images from dark skies. I was really surprised to see that.
Ps.: If you look closely, a couple small background galaxies can be seen through the dust (left side, below the bright star in the middle). Thanks to Abin user
Meeus
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