I posted a couple of versions of this one a few months back but wanted to improve it. Basically started from scratch, again.
The goal was to make the background a lot darker and mitigate the chrominance noise from the stretch while still maintaining the pop of the molecular cloud and also retain more of the starfield.
The original went deep but the overall aesthetic needed work.
Capture :
- Shot during the 2019 September Equinox from Tivoli Astro Farm in the Khomas region of Namibia - SQM 22.13
- Modified Canon 6D MKII + Sigma Art 105mm @ f/1.4 on Fornax LightTrack II
- 4 panels each 30 minutes - 60 x 30 second exposures at ISO 1600.
- 10 x 10 second, 10 x 5 second, 10 x 2 second , 10 x 1 second at ISO 1600 for the Trapezium and M42 core data.
Processing Workflow :
- RawTherapee (Flats, defringe, demosaicing)
- PixInsight (Alignment, Integration, Correction, SCNR)
- Astro Pixel Processor (Mosaic Registration)
- PixInsight (Masked Stretch, Starnet++)
- Photoshop (Layer Management, M42 HDR, Tweaks, Finalisation, RC Starshrink)