The Angel Nebula (IFN)

The framing is not exactly the one I was looking for - I wanted to have more data on the top area, but I had to crop the FOV as I didn't perfectly frame the red subs (each set was done on different nights, and the lum collected over two nights) since I'm still not doing platesolves and just eyeball the framing. The LGB data does show more data from the top (maybe I should re-take the reds!).

The image is not silk-smooth because keep in mind this is very faint nebulosity and although it may look easy to make it pop, it's still a bit of a challenge. I could reduce the noise a bit more, and some people may feel saturation is a bit too high, but this is how I like it. What I think it's becoming more clear to me is that, despite my color data is not to a point I would consider optimal, and my color balancing is not scientific (I don't use a g2v star or similar techniques), the color of the IFN tends to go more to the brown than to the blue.

So far, the only other image I know from this area is in fact the image from Steve Mandel:

In the image below you can see where this FOV goes, taking as a base the mosaic I did last month (the angel in this case is upside down):

Processing involved mainly DBE, 3-4 unmasked histogram adjustments, one ACDNR pass, one MorphTransform, and of course, color balance, LRGB combine and gradual saturation. The processing did not involve any masked histogram adjustments, curves (except for saturation), DDP, HDR or similar techniques - to better honor relative differences in brightness than DDP, HDR or similar techniques would, for example.