Galaxy "Fireworks" and star cluster NGC 6939

Excellent result, the abundance of stars doesn't interfere at all, everything looks quite harmonious.

Sep 25th, 2025

Excellent! The stars are removed using the StarNET plugin. It can be downloaded for free from the official website, I believe, and integrated into PixInsight or Siril through the settings, where you select it as a file (there are videos on YouTube about this). However, I think for this photo, it's better not to remove them—it looks more beautiful this way. By the way—why do the stars have 6 rays instead of 4? Are those additional support struts or cosmetic diffraction spikes? Beautiful!

Sep 26th, 2025

IrenReply to Nikolay Gorbunov

I know about StarNet, but I use StarXTerminator... Sometimes I don't really like it when there are too many stars in the image... No, there are definitely no spacers... I assume it's the too-long focuser that creates this effect. No matter how much I tried to figure it out, no other ideas came up). I even wanted to cut off part of the focuser to remove that ray in the middle, but then I decided to leave it as is. You could say it's a feature of my telescope, and I haven't seen anything like it from anyone else)

Sep 26th, 2025

Nikolay GorbunovReply to Iren

Ah, got it. I agree, it looks nice, but some light is lost because of it... Does it really protrude so much, blocking the mirror?

Sep 27th, 2025

IrenReply to Nikolay Gorbunov

Yes, it does partially block useful light. Yes, it is quite long, extending about 4-5 cm into the tube. And of course, it also partially obstructs the mirror.

Sep 27th, 2025

SlideReply to Iren

Stars can be dimmed in PixInsight using morphological transformation (MorphologicalTransformation), but before that, you need to create a star mask (Star mask) and apply it to the image.

Sep 27th, 2025