Here I would like to share with you the results of my most elaborate project so far. Inspired by several impressive and magical dark nebula images in Cepheus, I had taken advantage of the good weather in March 2022 and imaged the area around the nebulae LDN 1228, LBN 550, LBN 552 and LBN 555.
The processing of the faint nebula made me further develop my PixInsight workflow. So I used the new PixInsight feature "Separate RGB channels" for the first time. That feature is very useful for correction of non-isotropic channel misalignments caused by chromatic aberration and atmospheric dispersion. Furthermore I found a great tutorial by Francesco Meschia on YouTube (see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ZXqFmSRR4), where he explains among other things the correct use of MMT based noise reduction - an absolute must! I also used TGVDenoise for chrominance noise reduction and the ExponentialTransformation process to elaborate the dust and nebulae parts. Additionally, I tried out the impressive Topaz DeNoise AI tool for the first time during one of the last processing steps. Definitely not a game changer but helpful for the final polish! Interestingly, I ended up generating a slight Gaussian noise, which helps the sharpness and homogeneity of the color areas in the final image.
I hope you like it! I look forward to your feedback and comments.
CS
Frank
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