this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Astrophotography

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[–] mintakka 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The noise reduction on this is spot on, nice!

[–] lefty7283 1 points 1 year ago
[–] lefty7283 1 points 1 year ago

VdB 152 is technically just one part at the end of the dark nebula, and there are a number of other cataloged structures in this image. Captured from August 16-25, 2023. Broadband data from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick astronomy village), Ha from Bortle 9.

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: 30 hours 15 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

BB exposures at half unity gain (76/15), Ha at unity gain (139/21)

  • Ha - 102x600"

  • L - 200x120"

  • R - 70x120"

  • G - 70x120"

  • B - 68x120"

  • Darks- 30

  • Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

  • Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

  • BatchPreProcessing

  • StarAlignment

  • Blink

  • ImageIntegration per channel per panel

  • DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

  • Dynamic Crop

  • DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Luminance Linear:

  • BlurXterminator

  • NoiseXterminator

  • ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

Ha Linear:

These steps largely follow the ones in NightPhoton's advanced narrowband combination guide.

  • Combine Ha with Red channel (HRR palette)

  • BackgroundNeutralization

  • ColorCalibration

  • StarXterminator to completely remove stars

  • PixelMath to subtract red continuum spectrum, leaving just Ha signal

  • HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

  • NoiseXterminator + a little concolution

  • CurvesTransformation to adjust black point/contrast

differing from the guide above, the background was a dark gray rather than clipped to black since this is more faint structure addition than bright structure

RGB Linear:

  • SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

  • Slight SCNR Green

  • HSV repair

  • ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

duplicate stars only was made and stretched to nonlinear using a less aggressive arcsin+HT for star addition later

Nonlinear Processing:

  • Various curve adjustments for lightness, contrast, hue, saturation, etc (with varying lum/star masks)

  • LRGBCombination using stretched L as luminance

  • DeepSNR

  • More curves

  • PixelMath to add stretched Ha per the advanced narrowband guide above

  • BlurXterminator for star reduction

Next few steps kinda follow along with this independent starless processing tutorial for manually combining stars via re-linearization

  • StarXterminator

  • HistogramTransformation to unstretch (also applied to duplicate stars early image from earlier)

  • PixelMath to combine starless + stars only images

  • HT to stretch everything back to nonlinear

  • Guess what more curves

  • MultiscaleLinearTransform for chrominance noise reduction

  • LocalHistogramEqualization (2 rounds of this at scales 68 and 384 with lum masks)

  • ColorSaturation to selectively saturate reds

  • Even more curves

  • Resample to 70%

  • Annotation