The Wizard reprocessed

[paul]

I managed another night on the Wizard nebula but conditions were not great, in total across the 2 nights I had 13 hrs of subs.  I attempted and abandoned some Sii - the signal was weak and too many subs were trashed. I applied more than my usual rigor to the frame selection and ended up with just 100mins each of Ha and Oiii.

 

Stacking just the best subs produced similarly sized stars but much better contrast and range and so I ended up with lower noise in the final image. Oiii was still weak but I decided not to push it too hard.  And this time I applied the halo reduction technique for the Oiii that @AstronomyUkraineBrian suggested, it worked really well👍. Here is my second published attempt, (the many, many intermediate versions I won't bore you with😄!):

 

 

Edited October 29, 2021 by paul

[AstronomyUkraine]

13 hours ago, paul said:

I managed another night on the Wizard nebula but conditions were not great, in total across the 2 nights I had 13 hrs of subs.  I attempted and abandoned some Sii - the signal was weak and too many subs were trashed. I applied more than my usual rigor to the frame selection and ended up with just 100mins each of Ha and Oiii.

 

Stacking just the best subs produced similarly sized stars but much better contrast and range and so I ended up with lower noise in the final image. Oiii was still weak but I decided not to push it too hard.  And this time I applied the halo reduction technique for the Oiii that @AstronomyUkraineBrian suggested, it worked really well👍. Here is my second published attempt, (the many, many intermediate versions I won't bore you with😄!):

Those stars look a lot better now. I know it's not an ideal solution, better having no halos to begin with. 😀