M20 Trifid Nebula - Stars Redux & Starless (Ben)

M20 Trifid Nebula - Stars Redux & Starless

Right ... so ... I am currently trialing the Xterminator plugins and could not resist playing with old images, including trialing StarXterminator despite my usually cautious approach to the results.

This image was a quick one taken in 2020 as a test of my - at the time - newly acquired Nikon 600mm F4 lens + teleconverter under Bortle 3 skies.
3x 3' and 3x 2' subs in RGB on NEQ6.

I did not bother re-calibrating the original subs nor colour calibrate, that kind of stuff ... I just took the stack as left in my archives and then played with the plugins.
I also posted a "stars redux" version which I prefer despite poor autoguiding showing, but here I'm simply blown away by how much detail BlurX and NoiseX can bring out once you work on the starless image spat out by StarX. I know even an old version of the 600mm F4 is a great lens but with only 6 subs ...

Original
Final
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Description: Right ... so ... I am currently trialing the Xterminator plugins and could not resist playing with old images, including trialing StarXterminator despite my usually cautious approach to the results.

This image was a quick one taken in 2020 as a test of my - at the time - newly acquired Nikon 600mm F4 lens + teleconverter under Bortle 3 skies.
My NEQ6 being what it is, autoguiding was difficult at this declination but I did manage to capture 3x 3' and 3x 2' subs in RGB.

I did not bother re-calibrating the original subs nor colour calibrate, that kind of stuff ... I just took the stack as left in my archives and then played with the plugins.
I also posted a "stars redux" version which I prefer despite poor autoguiding showing, but here I'm simply blown away by how much detail BlurX and NoiseX can bring out once you work on the starless image spat out by StarX. I know even an old version of the 600mm F4 is a great lens but with only 6 subs, not ideal autoguiding, etc ...

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