The Spider Nebula

This image represents 18.5 hours of integration including 8 hours of Ha. It's quite an unusual image in the sense that the nebula and stars play an equally dominate role, particularly given the presence of some very bright stars.  As a consequence I decided not to push the stars into the background.

The Ha was mainly used to enhance the Luminance although I did add a little to the red channel. In an attempt to get accurate star colours I also attempted to blend RGB stars with the LblendRblendGB image.  Colouring the nebula was the major challenge since some parts are quite bright (the "head") whilst other parts (eg the "legs") are quite faint.