Never look a gift horse in the mouth - Horsehead Widefield - with help from Mr Penrice

[gnomus]

I have been at the Horsehead now for over a month.  The main target is a detail view taken through my Esprit 120 - https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/286778-horsehead-ha-esprit-120/#comment-3142273.  However, I have also been gathering Ha through my WO Star 71 perched on top of the Esprit - https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/286774-free-rider-wo-star-71-and-horsehead/#comment-3142239.

Nevertheless, despite imaging every possible night between 2 January and (now) 9 February, I have managed only 8 hours through the Esprit and 5 hours 40 mins through the WO.  After posting my Ha, images, I received a surprise e-mail from @ollypenrice.  He had taken pity on me and sent me some Lum and RGB data that he had taken a while back at Les Granges.  I must say that I was a little overwhelmed by his gesture.  

The Ha was captured through a WO Star 71 (Mk I) attached to a Moravian G2-8300 - 17 x 20 mins (Chroma Ha 3nm filter)

The LRGB was shot through Olly's reduced Baby Q (I think this is now Sara Wager's Baby Q) and an Atik 4000 camera.  Lum is 2 hours 40 minutes of 5 minute subs; I am not sure how much RGB there is.

My WO 71 shots had to be cropped substantially because the scope is piggy-backed on top of my Esprit 120, but is not aligned with it.  Olly's data matched it pretty closely - I had to remove the top half of his data and a small sliver of the right hand side of my Ha.   Everything was registered to everything else via Registar (which did a great job as far as I can tell).  Alnitak was a bit of a pain.  The Lum did not show the pair.  However, a false Lum stolen from the RGB did (as did the Ha).  So I have just about been able to show it as a double.  I went back and forth on the middle belt star (I think it is called Alnilam).  You can see its halo top left.  I could have tried to take this out, but I thought it looked more natural left in.  There is so much dust in this area, and I could have brought out more.  However, of the gazillion versions I put together, this one seemed to me to be the most pleasing.

Comments and criticism are always welcome:

    

[swag72]

I like the star colour and also the blues have been dealt with well. For me, through seeing so many images of this area, I have an expectation that the flame should be more yellow...... Perhaps that's just what we have come to expect, but I am finding this flame just too red for my personal tastes.

[laser_jock99]

I like this a lot.

[alan4908]

Very good image Steve.

I do like the colours, particularly the way you have processed the stars.

Alan 

[gnomus]

37 minutes ago, swag72 said:

I like the star colour and also the blues have been dealt with well. For me, through seeing so many images of this area, I have an expectation that the flame should be more yellow...... Perhaps that's just what we have come to expect, but I am finding this flame just too red for my personal tastes.

The flame here might be a bit more yellow:

[theo]

That is a quality result. Beautiful star colour and very nicely processed Steve.

Missed this second version which I also prefer with the yellower flame, Sara did make a valid point above I feel.

Pete

[swag72]

Ignore me Steve...... Looks like your processing is in good company   Who am I to disagree with the majority

[Knight of Clear Skies]

A great deal to like here, I prefer the second version with more yellow in the flame. I've just found out there are a few Herbig-Haro objects below the base of the Horsehead and NGC2023, I think you've picked up a few hints of them.

[ollypenrice]

19 minutes ago, swag72 said:

Ignore me Steve...... Looks like your processing is in good company   Who am I to disagree with the majority

I'm not going to ignore you, Sara, because I agree.

This is a super image and I'm only sorry that the bit I donated wasn't better quality, but the sky was a bit hazy at that time.

I think that what we have here is Steve's Ha layer being much stronger than the LRGB I had in stock. I guess you could let it be and declare it as an Ha-dominated rendition or you could play with the Ha in Levels and Curves to reduce and manage its role. In the end there has to be a balance in capture depth between the channels. But what would be the effect of a slight clip in the black point in the red channel? Or maybe, better still, a clipping of the black point in Ha before applying it to the red channel? 

Steve, good call on using the RGB alone for Alnitak. In LRGB imaging you often have what is, in effect, a set of short subs (the RGB only) ready and waiting if the L is blown out.

Anyway a great image.

Olly

[PatrickGilliland]

Nice work Steve - flame colour dealt with.  Th RGB only approach is a good move.  I often review my RGB only data for improved star colour and profile.  Also at time it provides a little more texture to the background, this is only of use of course if you have a smooth image to start with.  Surprisingly I also found different representations of detail present in just the RGB.  The Lum is always going to be the dominant detail but often the is something different in the RGB that can be more easily manipulated there.  Locate these and add back to master and you often have something new.  It's where I found my extra detail on NGC 660+7331 for example.

A little tweak and i think this will be right on the money!

Paddy

[triton1]

Excellent so much going there and well done for taming Alnitak you can just make out it's companion I'm so glad I was never tempted to turn to the "Dark Side" and that's because of all the hard work you Astrophotographers put in so I don't have to.??

[gnomus]

Thank you for the comments.  I really appreciate constructive criticism like this.  I did feel that the flame was a bit pinker than I had seen in other versions, but it was what I ended up with after my combination so I stuck with it.  I had a look at the various suggestions for bringing back some yellow.  If you take a peek at the Ha only version - https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/286774-free-rider-wo-star-71-and-horsehead/#comment-3142239 - you can see that the flame is, by some margin, the brightest part of the image (other than the stars, of course).  Black clipping the Ha didn't really change the contribution of Ha to the Red channel, therefore, and it seemed to make no difference to the final colour.   (It is possible that I misunderstood your suggestion, Olly.) Returning to the LRGB only image, however, (as suggested by Paddy) did bring some yellow back to the flame.  So with some 'joinery' (certainly not 'carpentry') I was able to produce something.  The most 'honest' version is Version 1 - but, perhaps, version 3 isn't too much of a cheat .....

 

[xanthic]

Nice colour, contrast and detail. Superb.

[laudropb]

That's a lovely widefield image. Lovely detail captured.

[gnomus]

Thank you Leigh and Laudropb.

[symesie04]

Very very nice. You have controlled Alnitak beautifully. And yes i do prefer rendition 3.

[johnrt]

Splendid work all round, all 3 versions are excellent, version 3 being closest to the "classic" look.

[gnomus]

Thanks John and Symsie.

[Gina]

Superb

[Ishan Mair]

Its a truly jaw dropping image Gnomus. I shot a similar field last new moon. It isn't anywhere close to yours but that doesn't mean I wont post it in the forums.  I'm ironing out a few teeny-tiny wrinkles in the image. One of them is a reddish flame. Its clicked by an unmodified Canon DSLR. Could you give me a pointer to how you made the flame burn yellow?

[gnomus]

39 minutes ago, Gina said:

Superb

Thank you, Gina.

11 minutes ago, Ishan Mair said:

Its a truly jaw dropping image Gnomus. I shot a similar field last new moon. It isn't anywhere close to yours but that doesn't mean I wont post it in the forums.  I'm ironing out a few teeny-tiny wrinkles in the image. One of them is a reddish flame. Its clicked by an unmodified Canon DSLR. Could you give me a pointer to how you made the flame burn yellow?

Thanks Ishan.  It was pretty much as described.  The redness was coming from the Ha, so I went back and processed just the LRGB stack which was much more 'classic' in colour.  I took the colour from the flame from that.

[Ishan Mair]

I realised it later that I had missed some of the posts by others in this thread. It took me a while, but now I understand how Ha was giving the reds and why it can be tricky to balance that red from Ha. They say mono imaging is a different game. Quite true.

[Barry-Wilson]

Version 3 + + +

[gnomus]

Just now, Barry-Wilson said:

Version 3 + + +

Thank you, Barry + + +