Barnard 150 - The Seahorse Nebula - is the result of 18.3 hours of LRGB integration on my AP130 platform.

Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of this image. I am still new at processing dark nebulae, and this one gave me fits. I got the look I wanted, only to discover that when I zoomed in, I had ugly artifacts from noise reduction. Unacceptable. So I reprocessed it. Seven times. I finally got an image where the noise is managed and the artifacts are acceptable. If anything, it is not too smooth. but when I backed off NR I still had some stipple patterns I did not like.

Noise was my biggest issue here.

But that is not the real problem. The real problem is that I chose absolutely the wrong scope for this project, which put me at a disadvantage. I should have known better.

The full details around this project and a complete processing walkthrough can be found here:

https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/b150-2025

Thanks for looking!

Clear Skies,

Pat