Revision 3/2023:
Once I looked at this again, I really wanted to try to improve this using the old data.  As I said before, the original image looked so very much like a piece of beautiful counter top granite that I had seen.  Nice colors, nice small details, and looked as flat as a slate pool table!  Given some success on other revisions on other projects I was hoping for the best!  While the data had suffered from smoke and wind messing with the tracking, I have to say on review of the subs again, at least none were suffering from tilt or backspace issues.  

Starting with stacking, this is a complete redo.  The whole thing processed like a dream, including mosaicing.  Didn't need to use ABE or DBE at all.  dnalinearfit hardly had to work at all for the two panels.  BXT star correction made little difference here, yet I gained some effect by reducing halos a bit.  Essentially no star reduction on this.  With a wide field (though only a C-sensor), the two panel mosaic makes the stars pretty small to begin with.  Unlike the previous effort, this is properly color corrected, and while you can see some color in the stars, I did only a minor amount of contrast enhancing with Curves Transformtion and no color saturation enhancement.  The original stacked mosaic, pre-stretched looked pretty good with just the automatic screen transfer stretch.  I did use some of the BXT deconvolution effect to assist perception of contrast.  I feel like I have developed a better perception of depth with this version and can see deeper into the darks cloud structures along with a more "real" feel.  So now I can conclude that this subject is not a bad target for OSC.

Presented here is the final version, with a mouseover starless version.  


Original Description:
This is a 2 panel mosaic of this region.  This image covers but a small fraction of the very extensive molecular cloud complex that includes the North America Nebula and the Pelican Nebula, among many other interesting features.  This is a vast area that has much star formation going on, some of which are more concentrated than others. 

Conditions in August were not good, including wind and smoke.  So I spent several days imaging for this, figuring that this was a better option than the darker nebulae I had been concentrating on.  Many subs were discarded yet even the ones I kept were not close to ideal.  After reviewing many images of this, I have concluded that this is a less than ideal target for RGB, whether taken with OSC or filters.  I am not sure why, but I struggled to get the perception of depth in the image.  It may have been the smoke limiting the signal depth that I recovered, but honestly, most RGB presentations of this seem to suffer the same fate.  They are not bad, but none of the RGB images approach the perceived depth that false color narrow band images do.  The North America Nebula seems much more amenable to RGB, and I am thinking that the significant presence of a strong reflection signal (whitish with hints of blue color) adds interest and complexity to the North America that offers depth information to the viewer, that is lacking in the Butterfly.  This is just a hunch on my part, but let me know if you agree or not.  In any case, this presents itself as a black and red image and I will also include a gray scale image as well for comparison.  While this is commonly referred to as the "Butterfly", I think I have seen polished dark granite countertops that look more like this!

For added interest, I also include the extracted luminance image from the vibrant image as a mouse over.