Target Details
NGC 7380 (also known as the Wizard Nebula) is an open cluster discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. It is also known as 142 in the 1959 Sharpless catalog (Sh2-142). This reasonably large nebula is located in Cepheus. It is extremely difficult to observe visually, usually requiring very dark skies and an O-III filter.

Located 7200 light years away, the Wizard nebula, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer. The active star forming region spans about 100 light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon.

Capture Details
Data captured over 15 nights between 12th September 2019 & 1st October 2020.
Imaged as a 1x2 mosaic.
74x 10 minute exposures with Hydrogen-Apha filter.
161x 10 minute exposure with Oxygen (III) filter.
74x 2 minute exposures with Blue filter.
82x 2 minute exposures with Green filter.
83x 2 minute exposures with Red filter.

Total Exposure = 47.1 hours.

Equipment Details
Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF
NEQ6 Pro
Atik 460EX Mono
Skywatcher ST-80
QHY5L-II

Processing Details
This image was processed in Pixinsight & Lightroom.
Calibration and Stacking in Pixinsight using Batch PreProcessing.
Dynamic Crop - To remove black edges & integration artifacts. (Each Channel)
Gradient Merge Mosaic - To create mosiac image. (Each Channel)
Dynamic Background Extraction - To remove gradients. (Each Channel)
Channel Combination - To combine RGB channels.
Photometric Colour Calibration - To calibrate colours. (RGB Image)
SCNR - To remove green cast. (RGB Image)
Deconvolution - To bring out some fine detail & tighten stars, 50-100 iterations. (Each Channel)
Multiscale Linear Transform - Noise reduction. (Ha & Oiii)
Histogram Transformation - To stretch the Ha, Oiii & RGB. (Using statistics process to keep background levels evenly)
Channel Combination - To blend Ha & Oiii into HOO image.
SCNR - To remove green cast from HOO stars.
PixelMath - To replace HOO stars with RGB stars, with inverted starmask in place.
TVGDenoise - To reduce noise, with Rangemask to protect nebula.
Histogram Transformation - To clip blacks slightly.
Curves Transformation - To boost galaxy saturation, with inverteded nebula mask in place.
Curves Transformation - To boost contrast, with inverted nebula mask in place.
UnsharpMask - To sharpen with inverted nebula mask in place to exclude stars & background.
Local Histogram Equalisation - To sharpen / add contrast, with previous mask in place.
Dark Structure Enhance - To boost contrast.
Morphological Transformation - To shrink stars, with inverted starmask in place.

Export as JPEG and import into Lightroom.

Increase Contrast (+25)
Reduce Highlights (-25)
Boost Saturation (+25)
Boost Red Saturation (+50)

Export final JPEG for upload.