LBN 1039 (Sh2-297): A Less Imaged Region

OTA: Pw17” f/6.5
Camera: QHY 600 Pro
Observatory: Deep Sky West, Chile

Exposures:
R: 16 x 300 sec
G: 23 x 300
B: 18 x 300
H: 17 x 1800 sec
Total Exposure time used: 7.1hours
Image Width: 41.5 arcminutes

Processing Tools:
1.    Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz Studio, Topaz Denoise, Topaz Gigapixel, Aurora HDR, Luminar Neo, 3DLUT Creator
2.    Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
3.    My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool

Target Description:
Seldom presented as a primary image subject, this object appears mainly as a small cloud at the end of IC2177 (see https://www.astrobin.com/search/?q=sh2-297). While it displays complex structures, as befitting a primary target, I suppose it is small for many astro-imaging rigs.

Wikipedia reports that 96 Young Stellar Objects have been observed in this nebula, including one pre-main-sequence object that ejected more than 30 stellar masses of carbon monoxide. The structures shown in this image undoubtedly were fashioned by all these young, growing, active stars. (One pixel in this image spans 50 billion kilometers on the nebula!)

Processing Description:
The "True-Color" mapping of the Ha (and synthesized Hb) was honored in this rendering. I used StarXTerminator on linear (RGB and Ha) images for the first time because I have frequently struggled with star glare concealing the Ha, resulting in black patches in the HRGB image. The problem was resolved by this early-stage star removal.

I configured a couple of PixelMath tools that were too long coming: the first one suppresses any given color by looking for pixels that have that color in abundance and simply reducing the intensity of that single color in only those pixels. The second tool does the opposite: it finds pixels dominated by a given color and increases its dominance. That was not needed here, but in another image I have in progress, it made a stunning improvement. (The "lightness" blend mode in PS was described to me as doing this. However, the result was not that when I implemented the published equations for lightness blending. Maybe it's my coding, maybe the incorrect equation, or not what PS actually does?

Otherwise, it was business as usual.

Alex Woronow