Another nebula where smoke claimed 60% of our subs. We still ended up with a bit over 16 hours but we were really hoping for more.
This is likely the faintest target I've ever tried to process and it was challenging. If processing this was a song and noise reduction was the chorus then we sang a bunch of verses before it was done.
It's an interesting nebula. H-a and OIII appear almost equally strong or perhaps I should say weak. It was tough to bring out much contrast without making that noise all too apparent but I tried to apply judicious amounts of noise reduction and various spots and it came out better than I had feared it would.
Processing:
H and O:
dynamic crop
deconvolution
DBE
Linear Fit (H as reference)
MLT noise reduction
channel combination (HOO)
four iterations of Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (see
https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/generalized-hyperbolic-stretching-stretching-made-easier-and-better.17268/)
TGV denoise
a few iterations of curves to try to bring out some contrast
EZ Star Reduction
Export as 16-bit Tiff
Then in photoshop's camera raw filter
even more noise reduction
The image still has noise but it's somewhat tamed. I really wish we had been able to use the additional subs but until the smoke clears this is probably the new normal.
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