Sh2-64 is the red nebula to the right of the image. It frames up pretty well with the more golden stars seen in the milky way core. I probably should’ve gotten more exposure time to help bring out some of the dark nebula details, but it was only clear for one night at the dark site (at least the night went perfectly, which is rare for trips out to the middle of nowhere). Captured on June 7th, 2024 from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick Astronomy Village)
Sh2-64 is the red nebula to the right of the image. It frames up pretty well with the more golden stars seen in the milky way core. I probably should’ve gotten more exposure time to help bring out some of the dark nebula details, but it was only clear for one night at the dark site (at least the night went perfectly, which is rare for trips out to the middle of nowhere). Captured on June 7th, 2024 from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick Astronomy Village)
Places where I host my other images:
Flickr | Instagram
Equipment:
TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
Orion Sirius EQ-G
ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 5 hours 44 minutes (Camera at half unity gain -15°C)
L - 76x120"
R - 32x120"
G - 32x120"
B - 32x120"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration per channel per panel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
Luminance Linear:
BlurXterminator (Correct only)
NoiseXterminator
HistogramTransformation + sketchpad’s iHDR script (low preset) to stretch to nonlinear
RGB Linear:
ChannelCombination to combine monochrom R G and B stacks into color image
SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
BlurXterminator (correct only)
HSV repair
ArcsinhStretch + iHDR script (low preset) to stretch to nonlinear
Nonlinear Processing:
LRGBCombination using stretched L as luminance
DeepSNR
Various curve adjustments for lightness, contrast, hue, saturation, etc (with varying lum/star masks)
Slight SCNR green
ColorSaturation to boost the saturation of the Ha region
More curves
NoiseXterminator
invert > SCNR > invert to remove some magentas
LocalHistogramEqualization
LOTS more curve adjustments
MultiscaleLinearTransform for chrominance noise reduction
Even more curves
Resample to 60%
Annotation