Planning
Long before I start capturing an image, many hours are spent planning every aspect of the imaging session. After selecting a target, I decide on the optimal equipment to use and pre-plan everything from camera rotation angle, exposure length, required filters and even best hours of the night to capture data.
Setup
Whether I travel to a dark sky location such as Cherry Springs State Park or shoot from my home observatory, my goto imaging equipment consists of a 26mp dedicated astro-imaging camera and 100mm apochromatic refracting telescope mounted on a german equatorial mount.
Acquisition
Every image I capture has an imaging script written specifically for it in Astrophotography Tool. The script automatically centers the target in the field of view, controls the guiding and imaging process and even refocusses the telescope without any manual intervention.
Stacking
Each image is made up of usually hundreds of roughly 3 minute long sub exposures, stacked together into the final result. This stacking process is carried out in the astro-photography program PixInsight. Once noise has been removed from the stack, the image is stretched and sharpened also in PixInsight.
Final Processing
The final steps of the process are carried out in PhotoShop where details and color are enhanced and the image is cropped