RawTherapee app Conquers Chromatic Aberration!

While I have written before about this noisome issue of purple fringing on stars I have found that the RawTherapee (google it) app does a fantastic job of minimizing this chromatic aberration.

After few clear nights in a row here, I imaged the Rosette Nebula with a 200mm f/5.6 old Pentax telephoto on a Canon T3i unmodded.

The chromatic aberration as terrible... purple fringing on the edges of the brighter stars! Yuck! 

But RawTherapee photo program to the rescue! It has a function that can reduce/eliminate the objectionable color and rescue an otherwise useless image! You can see the difference is quite apparent! Then I was able to increase the color saturation without increasing the purple around most of the stars!

The Occultation of Mars by the Moon Captured

Got up early this morning and caught the 4:38 am exiting of Mars from behind the Moon! 

Thank you, my wonderful wife, for helping me! What a trooper at 10*F   ! 

The Moon was only about 6 degrees above the east-south east horizon and some pine tree photo bombed my shot!

Camera: Canon T3i unmodded

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 4SE

Finally, after 40 days and 40 nights of clouds, snow and rain...Two Images!

First up, The Rosette Nebula (north east of the constellation Orion).
Under a "first quarter" moon it finally cleared up last night and I attempted to image for the first time in 40 days and nights!  (We are back to rain and clouds again...)
The night sky was fairly bright because of the nearly first quarter Moon upon a thin haze of wood-stove smoke from all my neighbors.
The result was a strong bluish cast that I had to work hard to get out of my image. Enjoy!

Info:
Telescope: Daystar 480mm f/6.5 refractor
Camera: Canon T3i unmodded
Mount: Celestron AVX
Imaging software: BackyardEOS
Stacking software: DeepSky Stacker
Post-processing software: Luminar 2018
Data: ISO 1600 - 6 subs @ 360 sec each
Total exposure integrated time: 36 minutes

Finally, The Great Orion Nebula (M 42& M43) and the Running Man Nebula (Sharpless 279).

from Jan 31, 2020, again under a bright first quarter Moon and the neighborhood wood stoves pumping the air with smoke!

Scope: 480mm f/6 refractor, Canon T3i unmodded
Multiple exposures from 12 sec to 180 sec @ iso 1600
Stacked with DSS
Post-processed in GIMP, defringed in Luminar 2018, Aurora HDR 2019