This image was a collaborative effort between /u/hotspicybonr and myself. Due to the fact that we have almost identical astrophotography rigs, we decided to spend last weekend shooting it together, over 2100 miles apart. The quality of the data we got was impacted a lot by the full moon and my light pollution, but I'm pleased with the final results. We ended up with about 1000 total frames across all filters (everything was pretty evenly split between us). Preprocessing generated around 160GB of calibrated/intermediate files, and drizzle stacking took about 7 hours on my PC. Captured on February 18-20th, 2022 from a Bortle 6 zone (Bonr's data was from bortle 4-5)
Also I'd highly recommend zooming and panning around the image, as there are a [fair number of background galaxies](https://i.imgur.com/VtW3DqW.jpg)
**Places where I host my other images:**
[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/leftysastrophotography/) | [Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/people/leftysastrophotography/)
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**[Equipment:](https://i.imgur.com/ejpKkwU.jpg)**
* TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
* Orion Sirius EQ-G
* ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
* Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
* ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
* Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
* Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
* Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
* ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
* Moonlite Autofocuser
**Acquisition:** 23 hours 35 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)
* L- 434x60"
* R- 169x90"
* G- 170x90"
* B- 170x90"
* Darks- 30
* Flats- 30 per filter
**Capture Software:**
* Captured using [N.I.N.A.](https://nighttime-imaging.eu) and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
**PixInsight Processing:**
* BatchPreProcessing
* SubframeSelector
* StarAlignment
* [Blink](https://youtu.be/sJeuWZNWImE?t=40)
* ImageIntegration
* DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
**Linear:**
* DynamicCrop
* DynamicBackgroundExtraction
* EZ Decon/Denoise
* ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear
**RGB:**
* Channelcombination to combine monochrome images into RGB image
* PhotometricColorCalibration
* HSV repair
* ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
**Nonlinear:**
* LRGBCombination with luminance
* LRGBCombination with luminance again, inverted background mask used to protect galaxy from chronicance noise reduction
* Shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast, hues, etc.
* MLT noise reduction
* Unsharp mask to further sharpen the galaxy
* LocalHistogramEqualization
* EZ star reduction
* NoiseGenerator to add noise back into star reduced areas
* More curves
* Resample to 60%
* annotation
lefty7283
