Here I am with the first image processed in 2014 , which has started with the bad weather and let's hope that does not follow like this.
It's a 4-channel color composition. This image also marks the borderline between my way of thinking my astrophotography trips before and after this shot. Yes, because this nebula was taken in two nights 13 months apart . Thanks to the techniques called plate solving now I can safely frame the shot in a very fast and accurate way, and this allows me to think in terms of projects more then of "one object, one night". There are a lot of advantages with this approach: there is no more frustration for example by not being able to complete a recovery in one night, and also you can keep shooting until the signal is considered sufficient for its processing.
Coming back on topic, I have always found it interesting even though very low on the horizon. I therefore had to choose the two clearest nights from Saint Barthelemy and with a bit of fog in the Po Valley in order to minimize the effects of the gradients due to light pollution from Turin.
At the link you will find both the technical details, the high-resolution version and a couple of 100% crops of two areas of IC2177
http://skymonsters.net/immagine.php?img=IC2177.jpg
Hope you like it!
