Horsehead

[Ishan Mair]

Widefield horsehead and Flame nebula from the last new moon. There's been endless tinkering over this one. Its been 15 days and more than half a dozen attempts and I am not sure I've settled on to it. Getting obsessive about extracting every last bit out of the image?  I'm pretty happy with it now as it was a small amount of data using unmodified dslr.

18 x 5 min lights full calibration with Canon 1100D
Skywatcher 130 PDS on HEQ5 Mount Pro
Orion SSAG Guider on 50 mm guidescope
Baader MPCC III.
 
 

[gnomus]

Nice one Ishan.  You've done well to get what you have done out of a relatively small amount of data.  You got a nice colour in that flame, after alll!

[Ishan Mair]

Thanks gnomus. At the end of the routine workflow, I had to select the HH first and then the flame using PI equivalent of "color selection". I played with it in the Lab mode and got this version. Pinkish hues around the HH are still bugging me .

[swag72]

I like the colour in the flame and the data looks good...... My retina's though have been burnt out by those spikes   I know that you can't do anything about them with that scope.... but Oh my goodness, they are huge  

[Ishan Mair]

• 1 hour ago, swag72 said:

I like the colour in the flame and the data looks good...... My retina's though have been burnt out by those spikes   I know that you can't do anything about them with that scope.... but Oh my goodness, they are huge  

 I wish there was something to do about it. But Sara if you are still alive after being cut but my star spikes, take a look at this wonderful image of the same region by another astrophotographer Bares : http://bares.altervista.org/nebulose/434.html 

CAUTION: THE SPIKES ARE LARGE ENOUGH TO HURT THE EYES OR CUT FROM  A YARD AWAY

[coatesg]

I quite like the diffraction spikes Great result for only 90min - nicely done.

[Ishan Mair]

Thanks Graeme. I lost 7 exposures because I forgot to turn on guiding in PHD2.