This data was acquired a few months ago at Cherry Springs, PA. I very excitedly made the 5 hour drive hoping to capture something magnificent getting away from the light pollution of Washington D.C. That night I captured 2 hours of data using an Optolong l-eNhance filter of NGC 6888 along with 2 other DSO's. When I got home I rushed to getting into pixinsight and was so pleased with the data I collected considering such a small integration time. Dark skies truly make a difference.

This is technically the second edit of the data I collected that night. Originally things were a bit more blown out and stars were out of control. It wasn't until recently I learned a few tricks using pixel math in Pixinsight that allows me to reintegrate separated stars later on during processing. I took this to my advantage and had a field day with sharpening and noise reduction on the surrounding nebulosity and managed to really bring out details in the Crescent Nebula. A few weeks ago I saw an image of the Crescent Nebula run its way through the internet and the man was using very similar gear to what I had. I figured if he could get a super crisp image of this target, so can I. I haven't changed anything nor have I done any retouch in photoshop. However, due to using Topaz Denoise AI, I'd say that this is probably more art than it is scientific. Topaz uses AI to figure out what noise should look like based on surrounding data. A very basic rundown of my processing is as follows:

Calibrated stack in DSS, open in pixinsight, DBE, light histogram stretch, starnet 32 bit stride, clone copy, use pixel math to separate stars into separate image, perform a more aggressive stretch, SCNR (G), curves transform, use lightness in LRGB combination to increase saturation, save file and open in photoshop, copy lightness and add as lum layer, create mask layer and perform Camera Raw Filter noise reduction on background nebulosity, gaussian blur - set to .7px (this blurs star artifacts that starnet couldn't compensate for) save file and open in Topaz Denoise AI, Noise reduction value 30%, sharpening 100%, save file, open in pixinsight and add stars to image using pixel math, finishing touches in curves transform, save and open in photoshop, add copyright, export as JPG.

So with that being said, I hope you all enjoy this picture as much as I do. I can't wait to continue working on projects like this. I personally love it.