M27 in HOO

[R1k]

Very pleased with the detail in this considering the short focal length (heavy crop) and total integration. CC welcomed. Instagram @paradoxctor

Bortle 6 North West UK - July 2020

Equipment:
- Skywatcher EQ6R pro
- ZWO ASI 294MC-pro
- Explore Scientific ED APO 102mm F7 FCD-100 Triplet Carbon Fibre
- Hotech SCA 1x field flattener
- ZWO ASI-120MM-mini guide camera
- Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED guidescope
- 2 inch mounted Optolong L-eXtreme

Acquisition:
- Sharpcap polar alignment, ASCOM guiding/dithering with PHD2
- APT image acquisition
- Lights – 57 x 300s at -10c, gain 200, offset 30 (total integration 285 minutes)
- Darks – 30
- Flats – 30
- Dark flats - 30

Procesing:
- Images calibrated and stacked in APP using Ha and Oiii extract algorithms
- Autostretched images saved as 16 bit TIFF
- In photoshop
a) StarXterminator on both ha and oiii images
b) Topaz Denoise Ai
c) HDR processing - select colour range tool to create a layer mask of the overexposed core, curves adjustment to improve core detail. Layer mask to selectively stretch for the outer faint shells.
b) high pass filtering to nebula to selectively increase contrast
c) further denoise
d) combine ha and oiii processed images
e) add stars back in using layer mask
f) colour balance adjustment and saturation boost using ACR and colour mixer
g) star minimisation using minimum filter
h) very very heavy crop