This is a 2 panel mosaic of the horse head nebula. I did the full HSO treatment and am amazed at the results. The combination of H and S generated a glowing front to backlight the horse head.
the stars are from independent RGB imaging with a ASI2600mc.
The color was generated as an HSO image (with narrowband stars), where I then used the new spectrophotometric color calibration and provided my narrowband specs and kept the color balance target as a spiral galaxy. That calibration generated the glowing yellow behind the horse head. I then removed the narrowband stars, and replaced with RGB (with SPCC).
I did use all the fun new toys with blurXterminator, startXterminator, and noiseXterminator. and got that nebulosity using the generalized hyperbolic stretch function.
This image was processed for aesthetics, not to accurately reflect photon flux from the narrowband sources.
In my last revision I spent some time working with Bill Blanshan's RGB star blending pixel math and star reduction techniques. It produces far superior results to blending or adding RGB stars in. It is worth the time to watch his video to understand why this works better -
https://youtu.be/nqnONWVwf-Aapparently, indicating that 2 cameras were used (mono, and OSC) makes the acquisition details go strange.
I think the features around Alnitak are a result of microlensing from the ASI2600mm sensor. The diffraction pattern was most noticeable in the shorter wavelength OIII channel.
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