Finally going through my processing backlog! I tried to get some Ha on this from home, but I had too many obstructions to shoot at this declination. Decided to keep this as a wider crop since most the images of this I see are cropped in on just the nebula itself. Captured captured on November 23rd, 2025 from a Bortle 3 zone (deerlick astronomy village).

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Pixelfed

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 10 hours 12 minutes (Camera at unity gain, -15°C)

• L - 97x180"

• R - 37x180"

• G - 36x180"

• B - 34x180"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

The luminance data was split into 3 stacks and combined to use the single channel DeepSNR method

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

Luminance linear:

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection using MARS Project data

• BlurXterminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (extracted stars processed separately)

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear:

• Channelcombination to make color image from RGB stacks

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• BlurX (correct only mode)

• StarX to remove stars (to be used for star addition later)

• StarX to extract a stars only image

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• Slight curves saturation boost and histogram adjustments

Stars only image:

• HSV repair

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear (less aggressive stretch)

• Slight curve adjustments

Nonlinear Processing

• LRGBCombination to combine stretched RGB and L images

• DeepSNR Noise reduction

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust luminance, contrast, saturation, etc

• More curves

• NoiseXTerminator for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• Even more curves

• ColorSaturation adjustments (get rid of some background greens)

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier

  This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

  mtf(.005,

  mtf(.995,Stars)+

  mtf(.995,Starless))

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation

WR-134 is the purple looking star in the middle. Don’t think the purple color itself is ‘natural’ but I thought it looked neat and decided to keep it like that. The nebulosity in this image is false color (although the HOO palette is kinda close to true color), and the stars themselves are RGB true color. Even though I was able to get some of the entire Oiii shell around WR134, I decided not to push it too much in processing. At some point I’ll shoot it again from darker skies. Captured over a bunch of nights in November 2025 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Pixelfed

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 28 hours 20 minutes (Camera at unity gain, -15°C)

• Ha - 51x600"

• Oiii - 113x600"

• R - 32x60"

• G - 30x60"

• B - 30x60"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

Narrowband linear:

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection using MARS Project data

• BlurXterminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (extracted stars processed separately)

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear:

Channelcombination to make color image from RGB stacks

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• BlurX (correct only mode)

• HSV Repair

• StarX to extract a stars only image

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• Slight curves saturation boost

Nonlinear Processing

• PixelMath to combine stretched Ha and Oiii images into a color image (HOO --> RGB)

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust luminance, contrast, saturation, etc

• DeepSNR Noise reduction

• ColorSaturation adjustments (with Oiii mask)

• More curves

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• Even more curves

• NoiseXTerminator for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• Guess what more curves its the best tool in pixinsight 10/10

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier

  This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

  mtf(.005,

  mtf(.995,Stars)+

  mtf(.995,Starless))

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation

Not to be confused with the butterfly planetary nebula, this is the one in Cygnus next to Sadr. I shot this thing years ago in SHO palette, but decided to shoot it again in Ha/Sii since there’s very little Oiii in this region. Captured over a bunch of nights in November 2025 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Pixelfed

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 22 hours 10 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

• Ha - 59x600"

• Sii - 74x600"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

Narrowband linear:

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection using MARS project data (had to do good ol fashioned DBE for the Sii channel)

• BlurXterminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (extracted stars processed separately)

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

Stars Only:

• Channel combination to combine stars images into color image

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration (Narrowband working mode)

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + Histogram transformation to stretch nonlinear

• Slight saturation curve boost

• Stars only image saved for later addition

Nonlinear processing:

• Pixelmath to combine stretched narrowband images into color image (HSS palette)

• SCNR > Invert > SCNR > Invert to remove some greens and magentas

• DeepSNR

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust luminance, contrast, saturation, etc

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• more curves

• NoiseX for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier

  This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

  mtf(.005,

  mtf(.995,Stars)+

  mtf(.995,Starless))

• Slight SCNR

• Resample to 65%

• Annotation

It actually looks like it’s namesake!

This is a combo of SHO hubble palette + true color RGB for the stars. Captured in October 2025 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Pixelfed

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 49 hours 56 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

• Ha - 63x600"

• Oiii - 122x600"

• Sii - 102x600"

• R - 63x60"

• G - 63x60"

• B - 63x60"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

Narrowband linear:

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection using MARS project data (had to do good ol fashioned DBE for the Sii channel)

• BlurXterminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear:

Channelcombination to make color image from RGB stacks

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection (this is some seriously impressive shit!)

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• BlurX (correct only mode)

• HSV Repair

• StarX to extract a stars only image

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• Slight curves saturation boost

Nonlinear processing:

• Pixelmath to combine stretched narrowband images into color image (SHO/Hubble palette)

• SCNR > Invert > SCNR > Invert to remove some greens and magentas

• DeepSNR

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust luminance, contrast, saturation, etc

• HistogramTransformation to further stretch the red channel a little

• more curves

• NoiseX for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier

  This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

  mtf(.005,

  mtf(.995,Stars)+

  mtf(.995,Starless))

• Slight SCNR

• Resample to 65%

• Annotation