StarTools

It’s been quite a few months since I last imaged ( my Wife and I eventually travelled abroad to UK and Malta after COVID put a stop to our plans in 2019 )
Dusted off the rig and imaged M17 under a near full moon with less than ideal conditions ( guiding was atrocious) Heavy dew arrived early into the evening.

Bortle 8 City suburban skies
95% waxing moon
8”f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon fibre Newt
EQ6-R pro mount
2600MC cooled to -10C , Gain 101
95 x 3 min dithered subs
40 x Flats
60 x Bias
EQMOD and Ascom Stellarium
APT
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( 0.75 to 1.0 arc sec total )
Stacked in DSS
Startools V1.8 Compose OSC Bi Color
Used the 4th SHO mapping in color matrix

Gradients were quite severe which restricted exposing more detail (post Wipe) during final AutoDev

Applied a default ( 10x iterations ) SV Decon with 16 Samples to deblur main structure with resultant white point stars.

Link to Astrobin below …..

https://www.astrobin.com/isvec1/

Attached SHO image and also a Synthetic Luminance version for finer detail

Thanks for looking

Comments welcome

Thanks

Not bad at all Martin, one can't even notice all the difficult conditions you mentioned.

Also, nice little dome photo there in your astrobin.

Thanks Mike
Much appreciated

Startools can make ordinary data look good ( well within reason )
Here’s a reprocess with less stretching and a different SHO Color map in the matrix

I kinda like this repro more than the original ( less noise / nebulosity smear around the main body of the object. I sacrificed some finer detail but to me it looks better
Always subjective !

Astrobin link below …..

https://www.astrobin.com/isvec1/B/

Clear skies
Martin