A conversation at the club about the problems caused by bright stars in photographs of faint objects led to a couple of sessions imaging IC443, the Jellyfish, in Gemini. Eta Gemini is a magnitude 3.3 star alongside the supernova remnant. Photo opportunities for this object this year are closing fast as it’s culminating as it gets dark. I’ve managed two sessions during this New Moon period for a total of 3hrs 20 minutes in my usual 10 minute subs.
Early attempts at processing were rather heavy handed with noise reduction so I’ve toned that down in this version and applied most of it when the image was still in it’s linear form. This has left more of the finer nebula structure intact.
A lot of the images of this nebula on the Internet are done with narrow band filters which suppress Eta Gemini but when using a One Shot Colour camera the star rather dominates. I’ve toned it down using the StarhaloReducer script in Pixinsight but I could probably be rather more aggressive with this.
