Horsehaed and Flame nebulae L HaRGB

[Mike Hawtin]

This one is a three panel Hyperstar HDR mosaic in luminance with the Ha and RGB taken through a Borg 71FL with a QHY9M.  I did three panels because the Flare from Alnitak was quite intrusive at 300 sec subs so one panel was heavily cropped to remove it.  Colour data was taken at the same time as that used for my M78 effort and is the same ropey quality, this image was a nightmare to process colour wise   and I'm still not entirely happy with it but I've called a halt at this point while I've still got a bit of hair left!  Total integration time for all channels works out to 12 hours, there is more info on Astrobin, comments and suggestions are welcome, thanks for looking.

Mike

http://astrob.in/152779/0/

[Stephen Green]

 Great image Mike great detail

   Stephen

[celestron8g8]

Looks really good to me . It is quite different in overall color sat as to what I'm use to but as many will question , What is the true color anyway ?

[Physopto]

I can only aspire! Really Nice!

Derek

[purdo]

Cracking image, well done.

[Mike Hawtin]

Thanks for taking the time for looking and your kind comments folks.

Mike

[SnakeyJ]

Ooh that's deep, perhaps a tad too saturated for me, but a wonderful bit of work!

[Epicycle]

Lovely mosaic!

[Mike Hawtin]

Thanks Jake and Epicycle.  Jake I did try various saturation levels before settling on this one, the less saturated efforts just didn't seem to suit the subject, it's all subjective anyway and we all have differing tastes, if past experience is any guide then  I'll probably do it differently if and when I reprocess the data.

Mike

[SnakeyJ]

Thanks Jake and Epicycle. Jake I did try various saturation levels before settling on this one, the less saturated efforts just didn't seem to suit the subject, it's all subjective anyway and we all have differing tastes, if past experience is any guide then I'll probably do it differently if and when I reprocess the data.

Mike

No worries Mike, colour will always be subjective, but it's only a minor point. This is a cracking shot and has brought out some wonderful deep detail. Orion has long been my favourite bit of sky [emoji3]

[Freddie]

Nice shot with some interesting colour contrasts.

[Gina]

Well I think that's really nice   Yes, different colouration than we usually see and I like it   Great stuff

[Mike Hawtin]

Thank you Stuart and Gina.  

Gina a couple of people have commented on the colour as being unusual, I was striving to get close to this super image colour wise:   http://www.starkeeper.it/IC434_M78.htm  as it also includes M78, my thinking was that if I could get M78's colour in my image looking natural and similar to Leonardo's and other very capable imagers online  then I would have a good reference for the colour of  my B33 and the Flame, in fact my reds are a bit more muted than Leonardo's as I thought they looked too intense and dialled the saturation back a bit. Anyway I'm pleased you like it and thank you very much for taking the time to comment.

Mike