NGC7000 reprocessed (one year on)

[alan4908]

Approximately one year ago I posted my first attempt at NGC7000 which was taken with my OSC camera.  Having recently added Pixinsight to my software tools collection, I  was interested to see how a reprocess would look.

I choose this image since I'd previously found it very difficult to remove the light pollution gradient and control star bloat.

The reprocessed image uses a combination of Pixinsights DBE, background neutralization, colour calibration and linear fit functions to eliminate the light pollution gradients and obtain colour balance. To reduce the impact of bloated stars I used the Pixinsight masked stretch before transferring it into PS.   Whilst I don't believe the image will win any awards, it clearly demonstrates to me the importance of removing light pollution gradients prior to image stretching. 

Original result (Sept 2015) - processed in MaximDL/Photoshop

 

Reprocess - processed in Pixinsight/CCDstack/Photoshop

 

LIGHTS: 20 x 600s, DARKS: 40; FLATS: 20; BIAS: 100.

Alan