Carina Nebula or Eta Carinae Nebula (catalogued as NGC 3372; also known as the Great Carina Nebula) is a large, complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina, located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The nebula is approximately 8,500 light-years from Earth.

    The 24.5h of LRGBSHO data in this image were collected by DeepSKyWest at Rio Hurtado, Chile between 7 Oct 2022 and 3 Jan 2023.

Software: PixInsight 1.8.9-1 and Postscript CS6

   The processing here was my first effort to incorporate all the recent great new AP tools into the processing of an image after considerable time spent learning BlurXT, StarXT and NoiseXT from Russell Croman and the GHS process from David Payne and Mike Cranfield and developing the workflow to use them together.  Key insights on the workflow came from Adam Block's interview with Russell Croman.  CUDA GPU processing was used to accelerate the three AI-based products.

    In brief, after ABE and HDR on the Lum channel, ABE, ChannelCombo and SPCC on the RGB data, ABE, natural color Pixelmath combination (Milne) of the SHO data and SPCC. StarXTerminator then separated each of the three into star and nebula images. Only the RGB stars were used in this image (after BXT) with the other star images discarded. BlurXT was run with no stellar sharpening and manual PSF (FWHM from the stars prior to StarXT) on the nebula images. Noise XT with 0.2 amplitude was applied prior to stretching the L, RGB, SHO nebula images and the RGB star image by GHS.  GHS was interspersed with HDRMultiscale processing or Local Histogram Equalization. The RGB and SHO images were then added by Pixelmath and LRGB Combination was done to create a single color nebula image.   Dark Structure Enhance and CT in PI.  Recombination of nebulosity and RGB stars and final touch-up were done in PS CS6.

   8/30/23 modified the color which I never liked on this image.