Sh2-171 & changes

[Hughsie]

I haven't been on this site or imaged anything either solar or deep sky for some time. Basically, I lost the passion for it and life was getting in the way.

With things more in balance I renewed my Astrobin subscription and started to look at some of the excellent images there and it rekindled my interest. However, I wasn't going to go back to the same old same old. For a few years I had used Sequence Generator Pro and watched and admired NINA from a distance. As my frustration with SGP increased my passion deteriorated even more so when I saw all the new changes coming into play with NINA. Unfortunately, life kicked in and everything went on the back burner until now.

Having watched video after video on NINA I finally embraced it fully and on 30th November and 5th December I captured Sh2-171. I targeted this Hii region for no other reasons other than 1) it was freezing bloody cold and 2) it was close to the Meridian so I could run all my tests, including the flip, to ensure all my settings were good.

So here is a test image of Sh2-171 using NINA and the following equipment;

• William Optics Z103
• ZWO ASI1600mm Pro Cool
• Ha and O3 3nm Chroma filters

51 x 300s Ha

35 x 300s Oiii

Flats and Dark Flats 25 per channel and 50 Dark Frames.

Processed in PixInsight;

• Stars removed from Ha and Oiii masters.
• Ha and Oiii stars stretched using GHS.
• Foraxx Palette applied to Ha and Oiii stars.
• Starless Ha and Oiii denoised and GHS applied.
• Channel Combo of Ha and Oiii starless images to produce HOO palette.
• Narrowband Normalisation process applied using Ha as lightness and Model 3
• EZ HDR applied.
• Saturation increased with Range Mask applied.
• Curve adjustments.
• Stars added back using Pixel Math.