Dark nebula are usually incredibly hard to photograph from light polluted skies. Still, I was curious how much (or how little) I would be able to see from my garden. There were thin clouds scattered over the course of both nights and the raw stack was littered with gradients (see Rev. G). This is not a problem for most photos and easy to remove with DBE. In this shot however, almost the entire frame is covered with nebulosity and it was not possible to get a nice flat backgroud with DBE, without affecting the central nebulosity.
For the final edit I used the
multiscale technique by Vincent Peris (PixInsight team). It works wonderful and the only requirement is a wide field, linear dataset of the same region.
Processed the core with HDR to conserve the subtle colors that are usually blown out by the central star. By looking at some other images there appears to be some pink H-alpha regions in there as well, which I tried to conserve.
Anyway, Summer nights were nice and warm. It was very pleasant to sit outside in my garden chair at 4AM and just enjoy the peaceful sky in silence. Spotted 6-7 Perseid meteors. Estimated NELM was 4.9 based on the visibility of U1 Cas and U2 Cas.
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