Advice on the Soul Nebula

[Thorney]

My first time capturing this target after many failed attempts.  This is 3 hours and 40 minutes over 2 nights under a full moon.  ISO1600 300s and 240s exposures. I used Darks/Flats/Bias for both sessions and dithered for the first night.

Shot with a Canon 600D.  RedCat 51.  Optolong L Extreme filter. HEQ5 pro.   ZWO120mm guide camera and scope.  ASIair pro

I feel as I've over done it on the noise reduction though as I was trying to eliminate the redness is the sky, but every time I done a stretch it would come back? (I'm not even sure what it is)

Does anyone know what this could be or is this normal? Any other advice or criticism would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[clarkpm4242]

If you have Photoshop this approach allows you to selectively stretch parts of the image..?

 

[Thorney]

Ok thanks for that. I’ll take a look and have another go.  

[MartinB]

That's a very nice Soul.  Nicely stretched and not "over cooked".  Your background is a little.  Sorry if you have done this already but it should be fairly easy to fix provided you haven't black clipped any of your colour channels.  Open up the levels tool in whatever imaging software you are using and then simply move the left hand slider over to the right hopefully without having to cut into the histogram.  If you have no room to the left of the histogram you are in difficulties and might have to go back a few stages in your process.  It is important throught the process of stretching the histogram to leave a bit of room over on the left to give you room for manouevre when this sort of thing happens.