Rosette Nebula Hydrogen Alpha

Long before I started dabbling in astrophotography and long before I embraced digital imaging, I was a film photographer and I photographed almost exclusively in black and white. So while the color astro images are truly stunning, I wanted to see if I could get a satisfying result in monochrome.

This was the integrated Halpha subframes from the Pro Data observation by Nik Szymanek on the new CHI-4 instrument at El Sauce Observatory in Chile.

Black and white photography is about light and texture. So working with the four stacked Halpha sub frames, I worked the image in Pixinsight and photoshop to present what I thought were the interesting textures and variations in light.