Rosette Nebula

Here is a redo of an image I took several years ago. As my technique has improved over the years I've redone this image several times, this version uses masked stretches and split star processing to bring out the nebula while keeping the stars from bloating. Click on the image to see my earlier attempt.

Object	Rosette Nebula NGC2238 RA 6:30.7 Dec 5:01
Exposure	60 minutes (30 X 2 minutes)
ISO	1600
Camera	Unmodified Canon 350D DSLR
Optics	8" f/4 Schmidt Newtonian Telescope
Location	St. Croix Observatory, St. Croix, N.S.
Processing	This image was processed entirely in Images Plus. Calibration used flats, flat darks, darks and bias frames. The image was processed using split star processing and used masked stretches to control star bloat. The background was neutralized to remove a red bias and the stars split out of the image using the feature mask. Additive colour balance in LAB mode was used with a mask to enhance the red in the image. Multiscale decomposition was used to enhance and sharpen the nebula image and a statistical filter was used to take down the noise. The stars were recombined with the enhanced nebula and the saturation boosted a bit.