Actually this is commonly called the Horsehead Nebula but it reminds me more of a seahorse than the land variety, so I've decided that it should be renamed!
It was difficult to process due to the brightness of the star Alnitak in the field (different colour halos, vanes, ghost reflections), but it seems to have turned out OK in the end. All data collected with the Bunyip 12.5".
I've been looking at your large image and the detail is just phenomenal!
The blue reflection nebula has so much depth, it looks like you could jump in and swim around.
Thanks for all the nice comments Carlos, Simon, John, Laurie, Col, Marc, Steve, Allan, Marcus, Justin, Adam and Andy !!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harel_Boren
I like it!
Can you share some details about scope, mount used, etc.?
Cheers,
Harel
Quote:
Originally Posted by dvj
Read about the construction of your carbon scope on your web site. Beautiful work! Really shows in your image.
Hello Harel and John, thanks for the comments.
Harel, I use an STL-11000M CCD and have a Paramount ME and constructed my own scope as per John's comments above. It is a 12.5" Newtonian and you can read about it here if you are interested: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ghlight=bunyip
There is also a section in my pbase site that has many images of the construction (see my signature below for the url).
Beautiful work David. I like the nice bluish stars and a few nice yellow ones. Lots of detail. A few comments. The Horsehead itself to my view is a bit oversharpened and so a tad unnatural. The yellow stars to the top left area have a shade of green in the yellow and so colour is off. A few have red rings around them from the Ha blending. Perhaps selecting those stars and using selective colour and adjust the yellows/reds would help. I am used to seeing the flame neb a more yellowish colour so perhaps a slight colour bias there as well.
Beautiful work David. I like the nice bluish stars and a few nice yellow ones. Lots of detail. A few comments. The Horsehead itself to my view is a bit oversharpened and so a tad unnatural. The yellow stars to the top left area have a shade of green in the yellow and so colour is off. A few have red rings around them from the Ha blending. Perhaps selecting those stars and using selective colour and adjust the yellows/reds would help. I am used to seeing the flame neb a more yellowish colour so perhaps a slight colour bias there as well.
All minor points on a superb image.
Greg.
Thanks for the comments and feedback Greg!
Just taking these points in increasing order of agreement :
I also noticed that the stars in the top left had a slight greenish shade, but decided that this may be a real effect as the nebula in this region has a greenish hue in this and other horsehead images, so I left it alone rather than try to process it out. There does not seem to be a gradient and stars in other regions look properly balanced.
I'm not sure about the horsehead being oversharpened, but that may be my taste as the image shows a fair bit of detail and I used a bit of Soft Light to bring it out. I'd be interested in the general opinion here though ...
I'll have a look at some other images of the Flame nebula regarding the colour, but I do recall looking across the web and there does seem to be a lot of variation here.
Yes I noticed that some of the yellow stars had red rings after posting the image - I'll fix them in the next day or so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RickS
A really great horsie, David. That scope is working wonderfully well.
Thanks Rick; yes I must say I am quite pleased with the performance of the scope. It will be my processing that lets me down if anything
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