Cloudy nights - so I decided to do a second processing of NGC 7023 on the images from 2022. The processing from 2022 included stacking with SiriL and processing with Photoshop and plugins like Topaz DeNoise AI for noise reduction, ProDigital Astroflat and the Astronomy Tools plugins. The results were not really satisfying, as the core was too bright, and the background showed some banding (see image below).
I decided to give it a try with PixInsight, using the following order of processes and scripts:
- Spectometric Color Calibration, which also removes the green tint.
- Spectometric Flux Calibration to prepare the next step
- Multiscale Gradient Correction (with gradient scale 145, structure separation 2, model smoothness 2.30).
- BlurXTerminator (sharpen stars 0.5, nonstellar 0.7).
- Create a star and nebula mask with range selection and apply to the image for the noise reduction.
- Multi Scale Linear Transform for noise reduction.
- Histogram transform for de-linearization.
- ACNDR for additional noise reduction.
- Arcsinh Stretch.
- HDR Multiscale Transform to reduce the brightness of the core of the nebula and enhance the structures.
- Curves Transformation for contrast enhancement.
- Background Enhance for slight enhancements of the darer cloud structures.
Results see image below.
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