Delighted to see how easy the Ha capture on this one was. This is another object that is easy to shoot but can be hard to shoot well, and as with my previous Veil project, I was sort of surprised to not find that many integrations on Astrobin of significant length, or at least none that also included the HA ribbons - one notable exception is Jeffery Horne’s 97 hour shot, which I also point out since my 87 hour total is in the same ballpark.

I am not entirely convinced my HA data was entirely clean - I have no reason to necessarily think this since my standard goal of 200 exposures / ~30hr yield is typically very clean no matter the bandwidth involved, but (perhaps due to how hard I stretch my data?) I am seeing much more ‘strength’ in the HA than in other Astrobin shots. Maybe that’s simply my preference for less subtlety, or maybe my Flats and DBE need work.

Anyway, I haven’t targeted this area since 2019, so it was about time. This is another of my “I want to shoot this well, and only once” shots. I don’t plan to return to this area for some time because there is very little for me to improve on - more shots always means more SNR, but for an area this bright (read as: easy), I think I’ll move onto the numerous other dusty areas of Taurus come next Autumn.

PreProcessing:

- WBPP for Flats, Darks Calibration

- Subframe Selector for Image Weights

- Star Align, Local Normalization

- Image, Drizzle (2x) Integration

Starting Files: L, R, G, B, H and L, R, G, B HDR exposures

PostProcessing Setup:

- Crop, Resample

- HDRComposition to combine Regular and HDR exposures

- ImageSolver Script

- DBE

- LFit R, B to G

- ChannelCombine RGB

Ha Processing:

- BlurX

- LFit to R

- Continuum Isolation using Synthetic Color Flow via NightPhotons

- Isolated NB colorized using NBRGB Script (and combined into RGB, see below)

L Processing:

- BlurX

- PixelMath to blend in Isolated Ha to form "SuperLuminance"

- NoiseX, NoiseX using LMask

- HT Clip, GHS, HT Clip, Curves Brighten

- HDRMT targeting Maia Nebula region

- NoiseX, ACDNR using Rista masking

- LRGB Combination (see below)

RGB Processing:

- SPCC

- BlurX, StarX

- NBCombination Script to blend Isolated Ha data at 354 degrees Hue (I didn't shoot H-Beta this time, so had to bias it more Magenta)

- BackgroundNeut using Aggregated Previews

- NoiseX

- Histogram (HT) Clip, GHS for non-linear stretch, HT Clip

- HT/Curves Brightness and Contrast tweaks

- NoiseX, ACDNR for final NR

- LRGB Combination

Star Processing:

- GHS stretch

- ColorSat

- Curves contrast tweaks (ensuring bright M45 stars have smoother glow for future recombination)

LRGB Processing:

- Numerous Curves tweaks for color and contrast

- ColorSat

- PixelMath to adjust Ha contribution

- MMT for scale-based contrast/sharpening

- PixelMath: Star Screen blend

- PixelMath: Bill's Star Reduction

- Star Color Fix using CIE tweak in Curves (Star reduction often targets star’s glow, meaning the more yellow stars becomes much more red-orange)

- Annotated and Signed