The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB (Kieran Gunessee)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: 48 Ori · 50 Ori) · Flame Nebula · IC 432 · IC 434 · IC 435 · NGC 2023 · NGC 2024 · Orion B · The star Alnitak (ζ Ori · The star σ Ori

The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB, Kieran Gunessee

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The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB

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The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB

It's taken a while to finalise this image thanks to the awful season we've had in the UK during the latter part of 2023. I finally gathered enough data to produce an image I'm happy with, so here it is!

This is the Horsehead and Flame nebula taken in HaLRGB. The processing on this image was a little different to what most people would probably do, mainly because I wanted to retain the detail in the dusty areas which was very prominent in the Ha data.

I processed the LRGB image as normal in Pixinsight and applied some Ha via Pixelmath. This boosted the vibrance of the red nebulosity but didn't affect the dusty areas. To combat this, I layered the final image + the Ha-only image in Photoshop, and set the blend mode on the Ha data to soft light. Reducing the opacity and applying a curves mid-boost brought out a lot of the dusty areas while retaining the detail and contrast in the nebulosity. From here, it was just a case of small saturation adjustments to get the colours how I wanted.

UK Astro-Imaging
William Optics GT Series
Fine Art Astrophotography

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9081452
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB

The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB

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The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB

The Horsehead & Flame Nebula in HaLRGB

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