The Pleiades, aka Messier 45, embedded in the dusty nebulosity the star cluster is passing through in Taurus. The dust clouds are illuminated by light from the hot young blue stars. This is a stack of just 12 x 4-minute exposures, as incoming Earth clouds spoiled some frames and prevented more exposures. Even so, some high haze hampered some of the images used in the final set. All were with the Starfield Optics Géar115 f/7 apo refractor taken as part of testing the scope, with its 0.8x Adjustable Reducer for f/5.6 and with the stock 45-megapixel Canon R5 at ISO 800. Autoguided and dithered with the MGEN3 autoguider on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. No dark frames or LENR applied on this mild night in November. I brought out the faint dust clouds with the application of luminosity masks created with Lumenzia extension panel in Photoshop, plus an application of the Nebula Filter action from the Photokemi Star Tools action set on a separate stamped layer and blended into the final image. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. All stacking, alignment and processing in Photoshop.
The Pleiades in Taurus, and the California Nebula, NGC 1499, in Perseus. The small blue reflection nebula at centre right is IC 348. This is a stack of 5 x 6 minute exposures with the 135mm Canon L-Series lens at f/2.8 and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800. From home on a clear winter's night. Original exposures were technically overexposed but processed up well with huge increases in contrast introduced at every stage, from RAW to layered Photoshop, to final flattened TIFF. Several masks employed to equallize (flatten) the brightness gradients across the image from radial lens vignetting, linear edge camera lens box shadowing, and linear sky gradients. But having originals that were overexposed provided lots of signal, despite having only 5 exposures median combined, allowing the very faint nebulas to be brought out without significant noise. Having a cold (-5°C) camera helped too.
