[SkyViking (Rolf)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Congratulations You are now an astrophotographer

Nice result indeed Rolf with lots to see the 7hrs of Lum has allowed you to reveal lots of dust too (nice pink neb BTW ). You have controlled that flare from the left very well and the detail is great but perhaps the general processing/sharpening(?) is a tad obvious at full size but it looks great at size X3-Large and smaller

Onwards and upwards with the new mini Hale now

Mike

Thanks Mike, good to know I've now earned that elusive badge of Astrophotographer Btw, I've heard of this 'Orion Nebula' which should be nearby, maybe now being a proper astrophotographer I need to have a go at it.

Re the pink colour yes it is indeed pink, although the emission from IC434 in particular is probably mostly red as I found the H beta emission in the blue frames to be very weak, much weaker than say the Eagle or other such nebulae. So on second thoughts I may have overdone the pink in my version, hard to know really.

I probably tend to agree with you re the processing. I actually experimented quite a bit with this image, changing my work flow and tried some new things and learned a lot. The result might be a tad soft at high resolution, I'll see how the next one turns out

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Beautiful!

Greg.

Thank you Greg

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Rolf,
that's one of the beast horse head's I've ever seen.
The detail is amazing.

cheers
Allan

Thanks very much Allan, I'm glad you liked it!

Originally Posted by RobF

Stunning work Rolf. Amazing to have it humming so well, so soon after finishing and installing. Congrats. You must be a very happy father

Thanks Rob, yes I'm certainly happy with the scope, there are no outstanding issues really. I've also just finished installing a homemade dewheater solution with Dewbuster controller - that was the last thing on my list. I'll probably post a thread with the details as it could be useful info for others.
Oh actually there is one minor issue remaining: I do need an extra Losmandy counterweight. I've temporarily beefed it up with a 6kg lead brick in a plastic bag rolled up and taped around the shaft in order to achieve optimal balance with the new OTA, but that hardly classifies as a permanent solution!

Originally Posted by graham.hobart

Us mere mortals tremble at the hoof beats!
Amazing.
I don't know why I bother with my stuff when guys like you and Mike and Paul et al produce such stunning stuff..... Oh yeah-it's because I like it!
Great stuff. Like an APOD.
Congratulations
From cloudy hobart (again)
Graz

Thank you very much Graham, you're too kind It's all about enjoying it isn't it? That's surely my motivation too. I love the tinkering, experimenting, fine tuning and of course imaging and seeing the results. It's a great hobby.

Originally Posted by astronobob

1st class Image Rolf, absolutely breathtaking, ive also not seen this amount of structure revealed
Credits to your write-up too puts a great new perspective on the Horse head through & through !
Awessomeness has been wacked up another notch
Congratts with your gear and Image result.
Top Show

Thank you Bob, very kind words indeed. I'm glad you found it interesting, I do try to add a bit of useful info to every subject I image.

Originally Posted by alistairsam

Great stuff as always Rolf. Very nice details.
How dark are the skies at your place and do you bin rgb at all?
Have you thought of adding Ha detail as well?

Cheers
Alistair

Thanks Alistair, I have what I would probably call 'outer suburb' skies, with limiting visual magnitude around 5.5 on the best nights.
I used to bin RGB 2x2 but with the new scope I gather all data 1x1. This is because the brighter stars tend to saturate too much now with the larger aperture if binned 2x2, and it also gives me more flexibility having all data as 1x1. Another benefit is that I can create additional synthetic Luminance frames from the combined RGB data if I want to.
I don't have a Ha filter, but it's surely on my wish list. Would be good for Moonlit nights as well!

Originally Posted by marco

Excellent image in every aspect I always admire the level of details you are able to achieve on your images, a great result indeed!

Cheers
Marco

Thank you Marco, as you know I like squeezing every last bit out of the data!

Originally Posted by RickS

Fantastic result, Rolf. You have injected new life into an old friend.

Thanks Rick, I'm glad I could entertain even with such a mainstream target