This is still a work in progress since I still don't have enough RGB data to get the color yet; but I have spent countless untold hours collecting the Ha data from ic434. What makes me so proud of the image is that it was not taken from a remote telescope at a dark site ; but from my makeshift backyard observatory area not yet put up.!!

I already have logged in well over 20 hours of Ha data and hope to finish up with 30 hours of Ha data before the end of this month. I'll finish collecting the RGB data this coming winter.

Pixel scale is at .81 arc sec. per pixel binning used is 2x2 since I don't have a KAF 16803 full frame camera yet which is needed for my scope. The FMHM is at on average at 3.4 at my location imaging at F7 2650mm.

I was told in an outside group that the original had to much noise. Well I would say I might have gotten to aggressive with my stretch and using new PS tools from Annies Action and Neil Carboni actions. I wanted to post a revised edition with lower background noise and please let me know what you think.

This is from my 16 bit tiff master. I still need to do steps in the 32 bit file in PI to keep stars under control while bringing out inner detail of The Horsehead Nebula.

I gathered more data of 3 hours Ha and hope to get the same tomorrow as well. I can see very clearly the background overall is really starting to show very low noise and high signal to noise ratio. I'll probably post an update late Tuesday night since it may be a week before I can gather more Ha data.

My window is rapidly shrinking to image ic434 . I was only able to pull in 2 more hours of data and it looks cloudy and windy the rest of this month at my location.

IC 434 has already crossed meridian shortly after nightfall and more than likely I will need to wait until Sep. or Oct. this year to gather an LRGB set run.

Update : Finally was able to calibrate and get master flats , bias and darks to work properly. I now have no strange artifacts in background of image. The entire image is much more cleaner and defined with great wisp of clouds showing. I must say although I did need to dump nearly 8 hours of data since CCD Stack could not align due to extremely different rotational angles throughout the 3.5 months of imaging IC 434. Looks like I'll need to invest in a rotator or just manually rotate the camera in the rough angle of zero or 180 degrees . Better yet do not ever physically rotate the camera if your expecting to image over a huge amount of time and subs.

I do show a line in the image from using the FFT parameter in ccd stack; so might try to realign without using the parameter. I did go through the blink process to make sure all 32 subs used were closely aligned.

Finally was able to calibrate and stack in Maxim DL 5 my only problem was to many dark black lines scattered throughout image when image was not kept at same rotational angle from month to month. Next winter I'll need to invest in a Gemini rotator or atleast make sure angle is kept at 0 or 180 degrees as close as possible and rotate camera at meridian flip to keep it aligned at near exact angle.

I may post the stacked upcropped image separately so you can see what I am up against ; thus I had to heavily crop this image to remove the artifacts from the background.