Astrophotography: NGC 225 (45 hours on a star cluster & dark nebula!)

Star clusters don't get a lot of attention in astrophotography. I think they are under rated targets. Many of them like NGC 225 are surrounded by dark nebula, reflection nebula and even some emission nebula. In this video I show the processing workflow I used on this image. The light pollution gradients were a challenge.
Equipment used for this shot:
Telescope: AT115EDT
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6R Pro
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#astrophotography
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Music:
'Moonlight' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

[@jayantnandy]

Loved the video. Also appreciate imagers clicking faint objects not frequented by most astrophotographers..

[@DSOImager]

Thanks! More to come hopefully :)

[@cryhavoc38]

+1 for the AT115EDT. When someone is using a set of filters worth thousands with a scope that costs around $1200 on sale, you know the scope is excellent :)

[@DSOImager]

It's a great scope.. an incredible bargain for sure :)

[@Si-fp2ij]

Love v4 James lovely work 👏👏🌌🔭 cheers Si

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Si!

[@yourfavoriteastronerd]

I love star clusters! This Is great video to learn. Last mon5h I photographed 15 stars clusters and the external hard drive went bad and lot all of them . Watching and enjoying James. Diana

[@DSOImager]

Thank you Diana! It was one of your videos that inspired me to target clusters more often :)

[@yourfavoriteastronerd]

@DSOImager Awesome! As soon as the weather gets better, I'll start photographing again, and now, with all the new editing tools, they are going to look beautiful. Let the 🌟 be the Stars 🌟

[@Thunder_Dome45]

That came out great. I did the double cluster with a AT115EDT too, but light pollution and lack of time didn't show anything but a ton of stars. My area is reported to be bortle 5 but since then a whole highway was upgraded to LED street lights and there hotels and dealerships in the north that all use LEDs to make the entire area day time.

[@DSOImager]

Thank you! That sucks about the led lights. Similar thing happened at my previous house. The city was very proud of the led street lights they set up behind my house.

[@actudoran]

that was really good 👍

[@DSOImager]

Thanks!

[@psuaero100]

Amazing image, so much background dust... you are a lucky man. I like v4 too... you split the difference nicely between the others. B5 and apparently a good bit of nice clear nights enabling so many hours on each target.

[@DSOImager]

Thank you! B5 is hard on targets like this. I might try that shark nebula this year.

[@psuaero100]

@@DSOImager Try a B6+ where I am near Baltimore. 😥It's so hard to process out any dust in my images. Even with 15 hours integration with my Esprit100 it's hard. OK, part of that is just my ability to process my images with PI. I'm not at your level but working on it all the time.

[@DSOImager]

@@psuaero100 east coast... especially NE is rough for light pollution. Thank goodness for narrowband... although that isn't much help in galaxy season.

[@AZ4Runner]

Pretty cool James! Enjoyed watching you process this image. Liked ver4 Loved the star colors! CS

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Jason!

[@ClearAmbientSkies]

Instant thumbs up when James posts a video (or for 45 hours on a target)! Realizing the blue areas of the starless image, outside of the center, were artifacts is what made this image stand out and impressed me. I understand taking a break from it. Often I do similar. I get mixed up in the current palette of the image and start missing things. I take 3 or 4 hour breaks and come back to then or in the morning after I realize I've been working on it until 2am. Based on your work here I plan to re-process my dark nebula images on Astrobin this week (I think or have 3 or 4). Your image here is wonderful.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Jason! Looking forward to seeing your reworks :)

[@Alan-vk6bk]

Fantastic image James. I've become a bot obsessive about dark nebulae even though they are a challenge from a bortle 6 sky. I'd love to see you take on the Rotten fish nebula...

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Alan! I've been avoiding dark nebula but I think I can do a decent job with most of them in my b5 skies, just need a lot of integration time. I'm currently collecting data on NGC 1333.

[@emuhead]

Very nice target & processing. Looking to image broadband targets too given just how real they look. Less is more almost.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks! Ironically I find broadband more challenging that narrowband.

[@SimonsAstro]

Really nice image James! I like the open star cluster with nebulosity and dark nebula! The blue in the centre makes it, and great stars! I liked your final version, I agree the one before, 3 I think, was a bit warm! Great job👍 Clear skies!

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Simon! CS!

[@Othman1992on]

Instead of using the stamp or brush tool to fix that dust spot, the better alternative is to select it and use Edit > Fill > Content Aware in Photoshop.

[@DSOImager]

Thank you! That is a good tip. I will give that a try.

[@Othman1992on]

@@DSOImager You're welcome. Don't do it on the whole image or it might freeze, and it's not what you want anyway. Use the selection tool to select that spot only then fill.

[@AstroSoundscape]

Hey nice work James looks like it took some work but came out nice. These types of images really don't look much to begin with but it's surprising how much you can pull out. Really pretty image in the end. Just wondered from your skies how long are you able to expose these types of LRGB shots? I often can't go past 3 min subs.

[@DSOImager]

Thanks Ollie! Lum was 120" and 240" for RGB. I have shot 180 on lum, and I believe I could go bit longer with RGB.. maybe 300-360" but 120/240" has been working so I'll just leave it there.