Something Stalks Distant Rigel

The Witch Head Nebula appears as a ghostly appartition silently drifting past the blue supergiant star Rigel, bathing in its cold coloured hues in contrast to the faint redish browns of the surrounding gas and dust.

This two panel mosaic was taken over two nights in December from the dark skies of Regan's Ford, Western Australia with an ASI2600MC camera through a Redcat 51 refractor.

Not a bad image in the end, but this two panel mosaic took a bit of effort to produce. The Redcat 51 seems to produce an ugly asymetric gradient when pushing the processing hard which is difficult get rid of - making a seamless stitch of mosaics more difficult than it should be.

And what's with the corrupted halo around Rigel!?

I'm probably a bit harsh on the ol' Redcat, half the flaws in the image are purely mine. I tried some experimentation to maintain / enhance star colour during processing (often stars become saturated white during processing long exposures) and with some success in my option. But unfortunately towards the edges of each panel where the optics produces some chromatic abberation my experimentation produces over-saturated stars. Also, one should be careful bringing out faint detail so as not to also bring out the noise - but I do so like seeing that faint stuff in the background...