This is the same dataset as viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3183 but now I used SiriL for a great deal for processing.
Especially the Photometric Color Calibration made a huge difference: this is done with data from Simbad and NOMAD and it calibrates the capture on the basis of the star colors. This means that the initial FITS data has to (close to) "real life" colors. I tried it with narrowband images from the Pelican Nebula and there it went kinda haywire (or I used it wrong
)As you can see (I did place a pic-in-pic in the upper right) it makes rather a difference. With normal background color calibration in Siril and Photoshop, it will give mostly red and blue. The Photometric color calibration brings out way more color (= detail). At first I thought it made the colors up but it's really just data that's in the FITS itself.
Another fun thing here is that my exposure time of 60 seconds was enough to bring the core and dust forward but it was too short to really capture the small bright blue stars in the arms, it's just a kind of haze.
The full res 4000px looks kind rough but still good enough IMO. Tried to reduce noise more but that just looks ugly, not "real".
See https://i.imgur.com/AJJR8sQ.jpg for the full resolution.
The Netherlands, Bortle 7/8
17 + 18 September 2020
Meade LX65 8" f/10 ACF OTA
Ioptron CEM25EC mount (no guiding)
Baader Neodymium SkyGlow filter
Zwo ASI294MC Pro camera
Captured with SharpCap Pro
127 x 60 sec @ -20 degrees Celsius / Gain 120 / Offset 4 / White balance R50/B50
Stacked in DeepSkyStacker 127 lights + 40 darks + 100 flats + 100 dark flats
Processed in Siril and Photoshop
SiriL: background extraction, banding reduction (horizontal), photometric color calibration and histogram transformation.
Photoshop: Levels, Curves, Astronomy Tools actions: Less Crunchy More Fuzzy, noise reduction.
