The Horsehead Nebula 10 hours 30 minutes now with cropped and high res versions

[Paul Haese]

Nice image Greg. I really like the overall image. Colour is good and saturation is rather nice. Control over the brighter stars seems to work quite well too. Well done.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Yes, a lovely image indeed Greg! The composition is different but I don't mind it.

A higher res version maybe?

Cheers, Marcus

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Nice image Greg. I really like the overall image. Colour is good and saturation is rather nice. Control over the brighter stars seems to work quite well too. Well done.

Thanks Paul. I am particularly happy with the tiny star sizes the AP produced. There are some really tiny stars in there. The advantage of tuning the PMX with a new worm and the AP's wonderfully sharp lens.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Yes, a lovely image indeed Greg! The composition is different but I don't mind it.

A higher res version maybe?

Cheers, Marcus

Thanks Marcus. I could post an even larger size. The beauty of the AP140 and the PMX combo is there is very little image shear and its sharp down to pixel level. More sharp than any other scope I have used.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/148209969 regular size

http://upload.pbase.com/image/148209969 crop version large image

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/...10365/original crop high resolution image

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/ima...10128/original double cropped

http://upload.pbase.com/image/148210303 Ha image


I think I like the crop version the best. Its the more traditional framing and I did a bit more star work, selective sharpening (it was able to take more).

Greg

[batema (Mark)]

Hi Greg,
Beautiful image. I was wondering what length your exposures were ( eg 10 min lum) and also how do you go about dealing with the bright star as when I have had a crack at processwing this image (badly) the star gets such a massive halo around it that just wrecks any visual look. Fantastic image once again.

Mark

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by batema

Hi Greg,
Beautiful image. I was wondering what length your exposures were ( eg 10 min lum) and also how do you go about dealing with the bright star as when I have had a crack at processwing this image (badly) the star gets such a massive halo around it that just wrecks any visual look. Fantastic image once again.

Mark

Thanks Mark.

The 16803 has deep wells - 100,000 electrons. That helps. Not too long a sub probably helps. But the main thing I would say, most likely, is the excellent baffling in the AP140 scope.

Also, I did angle the frame a tad to remove a stray reflection coming from one of the other Orion bright stars top left that virtually disappeared when it was angled just a little bit. So those baffles worked really well.
I did not do any special processing on Alnitak. That is how it came out of the camera pretty much.

Greg.

[Rod771 (Rod)]

Wow!!!!

Well done Greg

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Rod771

Wow!!!!

Well done Greg

Thanks Rod!

Greg.

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

Lovely. Colours detail faming etc all spot on

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by CoolhandJo

Lovely. Colours detail faming etc all spot on

Cheers Paul.

Greg.

[Gem (Grant)]

Love the colour! A classic look!

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Gem

Love the colour! A classic look!

Thanks Grant!
Some of these classic objects are worth the investment in time it takes to accumulate enough data to put something together.

Greg.

[alpal]

It's a great image.
There is however more detail in the curtain in the Ha image than has
come through in the final image.

Top work.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by alpal

It's a great image.
There is however more detail in the curtain in the Ha image than has
come through in the final image.

Top work.

Thanks. Yes I noticed that. I think it seems to wash out a bit in the mix. Any suggestions about how to increase that curtain rippling effect? I saw the same thing in Steve's image.

Perhaps a red + Ha composite channel rather than a Ha layered in set to red and blue colour channels may preserve more detail. Perhaps not.

Greg.

[alpal]

Yes - maybe try to make a fake luminance layer out of the Ha data.
Use curves on it to increase the contrast - exaggerate it a bit.
Also maybe sharpen it a little.

Try & blend it as a luminance but also soft light & other blending modes onto you final pic & see what happens.

[alan meehan (Alan)]

Greg this is such a beautiful image very sharp indeed,and lovely colours
your time spent has been worth the effort
AL

[kustard (Simon)]

Oh very nice indeed

I like the Ha image too, you can really see the detail in the nebula.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by alpal

Yes - maybe try to make a fake luminance layer out of the Ha data.
Use curves on it to increase the contrast - exaggerate it a bit.
Also maybe sharpen it a little.

Try & blend it as a luminance but also soft light & other blending modes onto you final pic & see what happens.

I can give that a go but I have already done that in previous steps and discarded the Ha as luminosity layer as all it does is give salmon Ha areas and damage the colour saturation. Sometimes you can get a gain with it doing that. The other approach is to make a Ha+red layer and use that for the red channel or perhaps Ha + luminance layer as a luminance layer. I can experiment with these but not confident its going to go anywhere.

Originally Posted by alan meehan

Greg this is such a beautiful image very sharp indeed,and lovely colours
your time spent has been worth the effort
AL

Thanks Al. The crop works best.

Originally Posted by kustard

Oh very nice indeed

I like the Ha image too, you can really see the detail in the nebula.

Thanks for that. The Ha could have been sharper as I imaged it in 2x2 binning to improve the signal to noise ratio. Its quite a dim target really.
Greg.

[Ross G]

A beautiful Horse Head photo Greg.


One of the best.


Ross.

[Ross G]

I love the BW Ha version.


Ross.