The Tadpoles (IC410)

Target: Tadpole Nebula (IC410)
Date: February 15, 2026
Location: My Backyard in Georgetown, Texas
Sky Conditions: Fair with wispy clouds, 45°F, Wind: light, Moon: 4% illuminated.
Bortle Class: 5
Integration: 360 x 60 seconds

We had some high-level wispy clouds which kept rolling in and out throughout the night while imaging. While it was certainly not ideal conditions for astro work, but it looked like the best night in the 7-day forecast, so I decided to get outside. 

The resulting stack was not best data and the wispy clouds made for a pretty soft image, but I happy with what I got.

Full Resolution: https://app.astrobin.com/u/justin_the_dark?i=hwo2mk

Post-Processing Workflow

Software Used: PixInsight

1. Stacked in PixInsight with WBPP.
2. Dynamic Cropped Image.
3. Applied Seti Astro's AutoDBE.
4. Applied BlurXTerminator at default values.
5. Unscreened and removed stars with StarXTerminator.
6. Applied NoiseXTerminator at 70% on starless image.
7. Extracted Ha and OIII channels with DBXtract.
8. Used MAS to stretch extracted images.
9. Combined Ha & OIII with Foray Palette Utility.
10. Applied SHO palette with Narrowband Normalization.
11. Created Blue and Yellow masks.
12. Adjusted different regions of starless image with curves adjustment tool.
13. Adjusted final luminance levels with curves adjustment tool.
14. Used Seti Astro's star stretch script to stretch star image with color boost at 1.40 and SCNR checked.
15. Combined starless with star images with image blend script.
16. Exported as PNG.