B33 Horsehead Nebula in Ha - reprocess

[x6gas]

Hello!

Given the cloud and rain I decided to put the processing techniques I've been learning over the past months to work on some data of the Horsehead Nebula that I captured last year. I had the pick-off prism of my OAG much too close to the imaging chip and also had some dust bunnies on the sensor so this has taken a bit of work!

Absolutely love the Horsehead and an image of this was one of many things that garnered my interest in astronomy.

This is just the Ha data. I also have some very poor RGB but I think I might be able to do better with that than I managed when trying to process this last year. It's kind of nice to go back to old data.

Captured in January and February 2012. 35 x 600s, no darks, no flats (sorry purists).

Scope: TS90APO

Camera: Atik 383L+

Mount: CGEM DX

Guiding: Atik OAG, IMGOH, and PHD

Thanks for looking.

[x6gas]

and here's a version with darks (x31) and processed in PhotoPlus X4 instead of PS CS2...

[Black Knight]

Very nice, I like that

Sent from my RM-821_eu_euro1_342 using Board Express

[x6gas]

Thanks Andy.

Actually not sure what was going on with the first image posted here - not what I intended at all!

[allcart]

Thats very good. I think B33 and Orion may have been responsible for mant folks taking up astronomy. It has always had an impact on me.

[Coco]

Full of detail

[kingboya]

Cracking shot well done. With imaging, and more specifically processing, as we get better, old data considered not great, turns out better!

[sologuitarist61]

Very good !

[Gina]

Excellent

[Martin-Devon]

Very nice Ian, really smooth and not over-sharpened - nice job

[andyo]

Very nice shot

[Mark at Beaufort]

That is a fantastic image. You have it all - and its great that you got Alnitak as a double star without washing out the secondary. Really like it.

Mark

[x6gas]

Thanks all!

This is a big improvement over my previous efforts but there are still a couple of things I'm not happy with - the dust bunnies in the lower left need to be cloned out (this was before I realised that there was dust on the chip, behind the the CCD window, now cleaned) and the stars in the lower star field are also too soft.

The real problem with this data was that it was the first I took using an OAG and I had the pick off prism far too close to the imaging chip which resulted in massive vignetting across the bottom of the field of view. I've managed to rescue this Ha data but I only had an hour each of RGB, binned 2x2, and I can't get anything other than the stars out of it so it's of no use.

[x6gas]

The endless tinkering continues!

At some point I've applied a blur without having an adequate star mask and so some of the stars are soft. Unfortunately, don't have the relevant step saved at an appropriate time as a PhotoPlus (layers) file so I've gone back and tried to repair the damage.

I've also cloned out the dust bunnies and added another selective high pass filter - might have over done that so...

...this one has a slight Gaussian blur to calm the high pass...

[x6gas]

That is a fantastic image. You have it all - and its great that you got Alnitak as a double star without washing out the secondary. Really like it.

Mark

Ah but Mark... Alnitak is a triple so more work to do!