As for the overall processing of yours goes, I think it looks well done. The only recommendations I’d have would be to bump the chroma on the oranges a touch and try to make the background dust stand out a bit more.

If this is a crop, you should try rotating it about 40-45 degrees clockwise so the fish head fills more of the frame and the curves give some more visual flow. Heres sort of what I mean about the rotation.

Meant to say 15 hours.

This had 180 frames of Oiii at 5 minute subs, so 18 hours worth of oxygen when everything was said and done.

Avoid the saturation sliders, it effects lightness as well. Chroma will allow you to push the colors but leave the brightness alone.

The palette is SHO.
I had a version where I did color calibration and had a linked stretch, but ultimately I decided I liked the unlinked stretch more and took that non-linear instead. Once I had it stretched, I removed the stars, color masked the blues, and pushed up the chroma value.

So before I go back and change the contrast and color mapping, here are some crops and areas that I wanted to feature. So we've got the NGC 1333 core, LBN 734, CED13, and then some fluffy bits of cloud whose name I couldn't find.

#astrophotography #photography

Still waiting on the moon to get out of the way so I can continue collecting data on any of my 4 current projects, so have a cropped in, slightly rotated, and slightly color boosted version of the Ghost.

#astrophotography #photography

I revisited this image to add a bit more contrast and reduce the star presence a bit. It’s a subtle change but I definitely like the additional presence of the nebula in this one compared to my original.

#astrophotography #photography

I was going over some of my recent pics and wasn’t overly thrilled with the framing of this one. So I cropped in a bit and rotated it to try getting a more compelling composition. What do you think? Is this a better result #astrophotography and #photography people?

The big star there is Gamma Cassiopeia. It's about 15 times more massive than our sun. It's actually pretty easy to spot in the night sky. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_C...

I’m thinking that physics or some form of engineering could be fun. I’d like to position myself so it’d be easy to get into some space related field whenever I’m done.

Does anyone have recommendations on programs that I should maybe take a look at given my background in software (c++)?

Now I’m at the point where I need to decide what comes next.

I don’t think I’ll dive back into big tech. I’ve thought about startups or something like that, but it could also be time for me to go back to school and get a masters.

Prepare to see this more often