StarTools

Last Fall I imaged the Flaming Star at 420mm, but it was just test shots - 2.5 hours OSC and 1.5 hr duoband. Can't say that I recall my thought process (or even if I had one), but I moved on and started imaging the Jellyfish (which no one has seen yet, because it still seemed too noisy even with 12 hours of duoband (I hope to add more soon).

This year I started imaging the Flaming Star at 910mm with the AT130EDT, emphasizing OSC because of the blue-grey reflection component. I have, so far, 468' OSC and 175' duoband (just Ha is useful, so OSC/duoband is pretty inefficient).

For the OSC color I used Artistic Detail-Aware, as that softened the harsh red on several of the brighter stars to a much more gentile orange. In NBAccents I made two renditions.

First, using the Balmer setting with the Strength maxed out at 200%
This did not seem to need any un-doing.

Second, using the Pure red setting, Strength 90% and gamma 0.9:
This did require a very fiddly masked undo. The fiddly bit was to protect the reflection nebula. Probably could be better.

Overall - I think I prefer framing at 420mm, but not enough to scrap 6 (partial) nights of data. I might add more Ha. We'll see.

Nice target. Did we have this as a challenge a while back? I'd have to go looking.

Kind of a hard one. So many choices! When I first saw this post using my tablet, it seemed to me the pure red - with the darker background (gamma adjust?) - had a better star field. More life. Like looking through an EP or binocs at a cluster.

Alas, I'm not sure the reflection areas are blending into the whole very well.

Uncertain if that's from the fiddly masked reversal, or maybe blue-gray and pure red just aren't meant to be in such close proximity.

A little of both, for sure. That's largely why I'm inclined to settle on the Balmer version. I can go back and try to darken the background more.

Yep - this was a challenge target last year I think. I was doing something else at that time.