Deep Integration on the Horse Head Nebula (David McClain)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Horsehead nebula · IC 431 · IC 432 · IC 434 · IC 435 · NGC 2023 · NGC 2024 · The star Alnitak (ζOri) · The star σOri

Deep Integration on the Horse Head Nebula, David McClain

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Deep Integration on the Horse Head Nebula

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Deep Integration on the Horse Head Nebula

HD image stack from a dark site in northern New Mexico. FSQ 106EDXiii / QSI683wsg / Lodestar / Paramount MyT. My guess is about 7 hrs of total integration through separate LRGB filters. Raw components courtesy of Deep Sky West Observatory (deepskywest.com) Processing in PixInsight.

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Revision: I had failed to remove linear gradients from the component frames. This one is a bit less of a peacock, but still shows the dark dust lanes beneath the Horse Head, which is what I was after in the first place.

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Revision: Bring out a bit more detail by slightly enhancing wavelet scales 4-8 pixels. A small boost of 0.1. Detail in the Horse's Head is brought out, as well as the Bok Globules nearby.

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Revision: No reason to be timid here... these colors are exactly what I would expect. Final color calibration awaits my analysis of M31 from this same camera. But the colors do look pretty close already. The orange comes from dust with stars glowing behind, the magenta is a mix of H-alpha and H-beta, red is likely H-alpha, but maybe some SII as well, the white is reflection from dust with stars in front. And of course, the dark lanes are dense dust and gas blocking the passage of light. Not sure what the makeup of the Flame Nebula is... We have everything here in this image.

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Revision adds slight enhancement to wavelet layers with scale lengths between 8-32 pixels, with declining amounts toward longer scale lengths.

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Revision goes more gently on the features, but does LRGB the correct way (finally!). Also adjusted the color calibration. Whole galaxy data on M31 through the FSQ/QSI system shows that R and G are about 15% overrepresented, compared to B. So this version as about 15% stronger B than before.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1061143
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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