Return of the Jewels (Reloaded)

A month ago we visited this jeweled region in the night sky, the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex located in belly of the constellation of Scorpius. I decided to take a another look at this region, as I saw images of the Blue Horsehead Nebula and realized it could fit in the field of view. Well here is my rendition. The colors and details were obtained after stacking just over 2 hours of 120 second exposures. The resulting processed image used a modest saturation as I was more interested in seeing the bands of dark nebula sweeping through the image.

For the techies that use PixInsight, my workflow was: Dynamic Crop, DBE, SPCC, BXT, SXT, GHS on the starless and stars images separately, recombination in PixelMath, LRGB Combination, NXT, Local Histogram Equalization. There you have it… that was certainly a mouthful 😊. Until next time be sure to look up and experience an amazing Universe!

Gear: AA Hypercam 26c, Canon 100mm (f/2.8), iOptron Sky Guider Pro

Exif: 66 lights @ 120 secs, Gain 200, Offset 3, TEC @ 10 degrees, 20 darks, 20 flats, 20 dark flats.

SharpCap, PHD2, AstroPixel Processor, Pixinsight, Photoshop

11 Comments

  1. Beautiful! I love the swirling feeling and you definitely captured all those dark bands. (As well as all the other colors). But now your detailed “techie” information is well beyond my grasp !
    I’ll just enjoy the photos! 🀣🀣🀣

    1. 🀣🀣🀣 thank you my friend. This one really impressed me when I realized how much details I could bring out. Definitely my one of my best to date. 😊

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