

Wizard Nebula - NGC 7380
- Owner: Nathan_2448 (View all images and albums)
- Uploaded: Sep 14 2023 06:09 AM
- Views: 290
- Category: Deep Sky

This was a quick project I did over two nights. I recently moved into a new apartment and just found out the hard way that the sprinkler systems run at night from 9:00pm to 12:30am, precisely where my astronomy gear is set up. After a moment of sheer panic, a near fight-or-flight response, and experiencing the five stages of grief all within a matter of seconds, I managed to move the 90lbs that is my imaging rig to safety without a drop of water on anything. Given the circumstances, I went to Stellarium and found that the Wizard Nebula was a decent target to capture between my newly imposed schedule of 1:00am to 4:45am. I found this to be a great opportunity to try my hand at a bi-color narrowband image for the first time. Nonetheless, astrophotography is always a pleasure even though it comes with a multitude of challenges/frustrations that us lunatics seem to embrace. I've still got a long way to go, but I am quite happy with this result especially only having roughly 5 1/2 hours of integration time. Let me know what you think!
Note: The blue stars here were very stubborn and resisted every method I had to make them white. SCNR, star masks, curves transformations, etc. all helped but were not a perfect solution. If you have any advice please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks!