20210922-23-24 - Sh2-173 CAS The Phantom of the Opera Nebula - a fake Hubble mask, listening to the music of the night …

What’s in the picture(s)
Sh2-173 CAS The Phantom of the Opera Nebula - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh2-173
Quote “SH2-173 is a HII region with a diameter of 77 light years, approximately 8800 light-years away from Earth. It is located in the constellation of Cassiopeia in the Perseus arm, one of the main arms of our Milky Way.
Due to its resemblance to the masked main charakter of Andrew Lloyd Webbers musical, the nebula is often called the "Phantom of the Opera" nebula”

What was the experience
The Phantom of the Opera is there … inside my mind. With the L-Extreme, you mainly get Ha and OIII, and as this is mainly an Ha region, the original image is dark red …. But I wanted to bring him out of the mirky shadows of the dungeons of the opera into the light and into the colours.
Applying some processing techniques to bring this to a ‘fake’ Hubble palette, the grim mask now stands out from the background of space.
Separating out the stars to obtain a Starless-version, I’ve ran the processing about 4-5 times, each time trying out some different settings, learning from the experience, getting drowned in the background noise, and trying to row with my boat amidst the falling debris of the Opera 😳🙄😂 .. getting a little bit carried away with my imagination 😉👻… the graininess in the background is like the falling debris at the end of the opera.
The Phantom of the Opera is (still) there … inside my mind 😉

How it was done
Scope: TS-94EDPH APO (FL 414mm / 517mm with 0.8x corrector)
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6R-Pro
Camera: ASI2600MC Pro
Guiding: @zwoasi OAG, ASI290MM, ASIAIR Pro + dither (#1image/10px)
Filter: Optolong L-Extreme
Resolution: 1,87”/pixel, FoV 235’
Moon: 96%(-), Bortle 5/6 SQM 19.60
Photons:  Gain 100 -10c 600s 62x (41+11+10)
Darks 30x / Flats 60x
Processing: PixInsight (Mac) - ‘fake’ Hubble palette

What have I learned from this
Separating out the channels, and pulling up the G and recreating a new B-channel to have all this then recombined in PixelMath has also sadly introduced a lot of noise. I still tend to be a bit forceful in the processing, the star-halos from the L-Extreme have become even more prominent because of this, but the main important thing was learning a new workflow. There are different ways of processing SHO/Hubble palettes, this is just another one that helps me broadening my processing experience.
Happy with what I’ve learned …. 🤩

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

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Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/users/WCA65/