M78 is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. The bright, young blue stars illuminate the surrounding dust presenting a dreamy landscape. Much more is going on in this scene though! The pink/reddish hydrogen-alpha emissions are from the nearby Barnard's Loop. The most interesting feature to me is the dark, dense dust where you can see red/orange hues peek through. These, known as Herbig-Haro objects, show accreted material ejected by a protostar as ionized gas.
Equipment:
OTA: Stellarvue SV105T w/0.8x reducer (588mm fl at f/5.6)
Mount: ZWO AM5N
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool
Guiding camera: ZWO ASI120MM-Mini OAG
Autofocuser: ZWO EAF
Software:
NINA
PHD2
PixInsight
Acquisition:
Location: Atoka, OK (Bortle 3)
Dates: 1/14/2026, 1/15/2026, 1/17/2026, 1/18/2026
Gain: 76 Offset: 15
Camera temp: -20C
L: 164×180" ZWO 1.25in
R: 86×180" ZWO 1.25in
G: 73×180" ZWO 1.25in
B: 83×180" ZWO 1.25in
Total integration time: 20hr 18min
64x darks per calibration
30x flats per calibration
200x bias per calibration
Preprocessing:
WBPP script to generate calibrated images
StarAlignment
ImageIntegration
DynamicCrop each master
Luminance Processing:
BlurXTerminator
NoiseXTerminator
MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch
StarXTerminator
Cloned image and ran HDRMultiscaleTransform
Blended 25% of the cloned image with original using Pixelmath
Added stars back in using Pixelmath screen blend formula
Created RGB image with ChannelCombination
RGB Processing:
SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
BlurXTerminator
NoiseXTerminator
MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch
SCNR Green
StarXTerminator
CurvesTransformation for contrast
Added stars back in using Pixelmath screen blend formula
Combined RGB with Luminance using LRGBCombination
LRGB Processing:
StarXTerminator
CurvesTransformation for saturation
Added stars back in using Pixelmath screen blend formula
SCNR Green
CurvesTransformation for final contrast and color balance
by KBALLZZ