NGC 2359 (also known as Thor's Helmet) is an emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major at a distance of 11.96 thousand light years.
It is an amazing 30 light-years in size. The central star is the Wolf-Ravet star, WR7.
NGC2359 is also know as the Duck Nebula which can be better visualized when the field is rotated 90 degrees CCW.
Identified in other catalogs as Sharpless2-298 and Gum4. Wikipedia.

I had wanted to capture Thor's helmet prior to the end of nebula season and the opportunity arose over the 2 nights prior to what was to be cloud covered rainstorms for the next week.
This was a somewhat difficult but desirable object to image as it was low in the southern horizon in the southern glow of Tucson's light dome and just over my roof line.
I started my imaging just after there was enough darkness to polar align and imaged over 2 nights and continued until about 2:30 each night until it set below my visibility.
Regardless, using the Antlia triband filter, I was able to obtain and keep most of the light frames to process a nice image.

My processing work flow utilized WBPP with calibration frames and 1x drizzling.
The sub frames were batch processed with lights, darks, flats and darkflats using WBPP.

On this session I changed my dither to every frame and a 5 pixel dither to reduce and remove artifacts,
including hot pixels or bad columns as much as possible prior to processing.
I was using the ASIAir and noted more background noise in images obtained at the Airs default settings.
This adjustment seems to have improved my background noise prior to any processing.

Imaged in my backyard in Tucson, AZ on February 4th and 5th , 2024.
On this image I used the Antlia Triband filter with the ZWO 2600MC camera.
Taken with the Takahashi FSQ-106.
42 subs at 1000 sec with the Antlia Triband filter.

The original master light was cloned and cropped.
DBE was utilized to remove gradients.
I tried Graxpert but did not get a satisfactory gradient removal.
Color calibration was applied with the original ColorCalibration process.
I then applied BlurX, NoiseX and StarX ala Russell Croman.
Final stretching of the starless image was accomplished using a combination of GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch and the HistogramTransformation tool.

After stretching, I added NoiseExterminator at default settings.
SHO pallet was obtained using Bill Blanshan’s NarrowBandNormalization.
Sharpening was applied using very light application of LocalHistogramEqualization, Multiscale Transformation and Unsharp masking.
I have been finding that a light touch gives a much more appealing result.
DarkStructureEnhance was applied as a final step in Pixinsight.

Stars were stretched and then color adjusted with curves.
The final stars and starless images were recombined with Pixel math and star reduction using Bill Blanshan's star reduction process.
I then exported the Tiff file into Photoshop and utilized luminosity masking to further enhance and bring out fainter nebulosity and contrast.
Luminosity masking gives me incredible control in the selection process to achieve tonal adjustment.

See Tony Kuypers excellent website where you can learn more on this fantastic tool.
If you want to go a step farther in the luminosity masking process I would direct you to Dave Kelly's excellent youtube site where each friday he processes a landscape photo using Tony's luminosity panel and delving into techniques that I am porting over into my astro processing. Although he focuses on landscape, all of his techniques can be utilized for astrophotography and I am ramping up my skills for future images including my landscape, milky way and gemstone photography.

Finally, I added a bit more saturation and ran it through Topaz AI to give it a hint of final polish and sharpness.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did as I had been looking forward to it's acquisition and processing.
Vic