For those who don’t see the ghost

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Really glad how close I managed to get this to true color using just hydrogen and sulfur filters. My one complaint with this image is the halo around Gamma Cass present in both filters. Somehow my previous photo of Alnitak using an identical imaging train didn’t have it this extreme. The glow around the bright star isn’t nebulosity, but an artifact from the microlenses in the ASI1600 camera. Captured on December 8th, 14th, 22nd, and 26th, 2020 from a bortle 6 zone

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

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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-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 18 hours 36 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)

• Ha- 94x360"

• Sii- 92x360

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

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

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• ImageIntegration to make a superluminance channel (just chucked every frame into a stack)

• DrizzleIntegration per panel(2x, Var β=1.5)

Linear:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Ha and Sii Stacks

• ChannelCombination to combine channels

Red = Ha

Green = Sii

Blue = Sii

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch

• HistogramTransformation

• LRGBCombination with nonlinear superlum

Superliminance

• EZ Denoise

• ArcsinhStretch

• HistogramTransformation

Nonlinear

• CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, and saturation

• ACDNR

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• HistogramTransformation to reduce black point

• More Curves

• EZ Star Reduction

• DynamicCrop (lotta empty space on my original framing)

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation