There is no need for me to introduce you to these iconic objects.

Happy Anniversary! One year ago I started on AB with a free account. On 1 August I paid for a year and have never looked back;, I'm so happy to have made this journey. There has been a lot of growth (with all of the attendant growing pains) and I look back with all the fondness and grief that this hobby brings to each of us. Thank you to all of you who've been there with me, helping me to learn and to grow.

This image was the second experimental use of the L-eXtreme filter. I captured the data over two nights; guiding and star quality were reasonable on both nights, so I believe the data are quite good. Therefore, any faults you see with the image rest solely with me.

The stars turned out much better than expected. This filter does wipe out most of the star color, but I figured out a workaround in post that is largely satisfactory--only a couple of minor optical issues to still sort out. Don't be surprised if I reach out to you for some special help to resolve those final problems! In any case, as things stand, I don't believe I will have to shoot a separate RGB-stars layer.

The famous star in this image is, of course, the giant 52 Cygni. It is a K0IIIa star and should appear slightly yellowish-white. It is a problematic star because of its location. In this case, I managed to preserve its color, but there's not much I am currently able to do about its interaction with the nearby nebula--there seems to be a slight elongation to the star that is likely the result of the underlying nebula. I didn't want to edit out that data, however. Let's try and keep things real.

While this image is probably one of my better ones, it is clear there are things I need help with. I typically don't use masks (I should and am not sure how) and my background remains rather uneven and noisy (I'd like to fix that without distorting the data). I think I'm at a crossroads in my post-processing skills and need some mentoring on some of the finer points so I can move forward and continue to grow. If you use PhotoShop (I don't use PI) and want to teach me a few tricks, I'm happy to learn. Feel free to reach out.

I think I will leave it at that. No long explanations this time. I hope you enjoy the image. The one I did 11 months ago is here, but I don't recommend you look at it. Things change. Babies grow up and learn new skills. No sense dwelling in the past.