This is my first serious image of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant, first recorded by the Chinese in 1054, when it outshone the sun for 20 days - quite a stellar explosion! At over 6000 LY away, this appears as a smudge in moderate amateur instruments, and doesn't reveal its true glory until imaged with a long exposure.
My image comprises 75m LRGB data through my one shot colour camera, using 150s sub-frames, and even then the tracking was not great (I forget whether this was due to poor alignment, balance, or atmospheric conditions). A little post processing magic in Startools, allowed me to warp back the stars, and bring out the detail and 'natural' colour - bright hydrogen filaments surrounded by synchrotron radiation - see Detlef Hartmann's amazing decade time-lapse sequence at
www.astrobin.com/327338/0 stellar evolution before your eyes.
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