The Heart Nebula

Gear

Explore Scientific ED102-FCD100 / ES 3″ Field Flattener & 0.7x Reducer / EQR6-Pro / ASI6200MM Pro / Optolong filters / Orion 50mm & ASI120MM-S guide

Stacked in Astro Pixel Processor and edited in PixInsight. Shot in San Mateo, California, in Bortle 5/6 skies, September 6 and 10, 2021.

Subs

41 x 00 sec Hydrogen-alpha
41 x 600 sec Suphur-ii
38 x 600 sec Oxygen-iii
(20 hours total)

Workflow

• Stack in AstroPixelProcessor (lights, flats, darks, flat darks)
• Denoise each channel
• Deconvolution on Hydrogen-alpha
• Coarse HistogramTransformation on each channel
• Star reduction on each channel
• PixelMath Combination
• Foraxx / @thecoldestnights SHO formula
  • R = (Oiii^~Oiii)*Sii + ~(Oiii^~Oiii)*Ha
  • G = ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Oiii
  • B = Oiii
• Neutralize background using DynamicBackgroundExtraction
• HistogramTransform + CurveTransformation
• LRGB / add Ha as Luminance channel
• Export to TIFF
• Touch up in Lightroom (mild)