This is my first attempt to capture and process a dark nebula.  I have read how much harder they are to process and wow, it was really challenging.

The data was captured by me from a campsite in the outback of Australia at Mount Mulligan QLD with my FSQ85 that I hand carried half way across the world.  This is a Bortle 1 site with zero light pollution.  The dates were chosen to be moonless.  The conditions were nearly perfect.  I was harassed by a thin cirrus layer occasionally so the data is not completely perfect, but NSG did good job of managing it.  Funny thing about a Bortle 1 is that it's nearly impossible to know when there is thin cloud cover because there is no light reflecting off of the clouds from below.  Stars just get a little dimmer.  I had to use my phone to take long exposure images to tell when they were passing by.

On this trip I managed nearly six full nights of imaging and I really tried to cram in as many targets as I could.  I had two of the nights cut short by fog causing me to sacrifice some of the planned time on targets.  I have  never dared to attempt a dark nebula from my Bortle 7-8 backyard so I have no prior dark nebula experience. Therefore, I did not want to dedicate too much valuable imaging time to this target just in case.  As a result, the measly 5 hour integration time is not long enough to really do this target justice.  (my processing skills are not there yet either)  With only 40min each of RGB it was a struggle to generate an image that I was happy with.  However, I will definitely be adding data to this project in the future.  And I am thrilled to have a pleasing result with such a small data set.

Long story short, this was a really hard project from acquisition to final result.

Dark nebula are essentially clouds of dust and gas in space.  These clouds are blocking out the star field behind them.  There is nothing nearby causing this particular cloud of matter to glow.  Nor is there nearby starlight reflecting off of it to make it glow.  It is just a cloud in interstellar space.  Just like a cloud that passes overhead at night and blocks out some stars from our view.

I would love to receive some tips or constructive criticism.  There are few examples of this target online to compare to so I just worked towards what I thought may look good.