I made an attempt to show the Ha clouds around Andromeda last year
(previous attempt), while the result was okay, I did not quite get it right.
I was not planning on revising this stack this season, but this happened to be my parking target on my widefield setup. I ended up getting a lot more data than I planned, so thought why not bring all of the data together and see what I get.
I have 0 knowledge on Photoshop and thought this time around, I will try with layers, maybe that will work better. After mucking around for a couple hours, I just went back to PixInsight and had to use PixelMath and create specific masks to blend Ha onto the galaxy and the background.
My previous attempt was more like bringing a bull into a china shop, I just blended, ran with it along with a lot of background noise. So slowed down and did more targeted blending this time, while not altering the colors of the galaxy too much. The starless Ha version is way too strong, and every attempt messed up. After several revisions, I settled for this.
I hope I made a decent result out of it this time around and you enjoy this result. Clear skies!
Exposures
Ha - 30h ( To get the Ha to shine through brightly, I think it needs a lot more)
Lum - 13.5h
RGB - 21 h (7 each)
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