It's been three years since I started dreaming of getting a close-up shot of the famed Horsehead.
Today, that goal is achieved. ✅
One of the primary reasons for getting a Mewlon 180c this year was in tribute to the mighty JWST and its now iconic six-point refraction spikes. It might seem silly to care about the number of spikes a star gets, but I'm one of those freaks. I can't stand four spikes. Six spikes, however ... chef's kiss. 🤌
This was shot in my usual light polluted Bortle 7 location and while I'd love to have sunk at least 20h into it, the last two months of back-to-back cloudy nights tell me I should be happy to have gathered the poorly 3h integration you see here.
I may be wrong, but it seems like this image is also one of, if not the,
first DSO object shot with the
Apollo-M MAX Pro (IMX432) cooled camera on Astrobin. 🙌
This also marks my first proper Mono image, which did see me learning quite a bit more Pixinsight and doing all the usual three-channel acrobatics. For anyone interested, the Pixel Math formulas were:
// R: Ha*0.9
// G: Sii*0.6 + Ha*0.5
// B: Oiii*0.7 + Ha*0.3
I did shoot Luminance as well, but ultimately had to ditch the whole batch on account of very strong reflections from, who else,
Alnitak.
The resulting colour combination then underwent a series of Channel Mixer adjustments to get the colours you see in the final image.
With January looking just as cloudy as the past months, it's unlikely I'll get another chance to image anything in Orion this year, but even so, I'm quite happy to check this one off.
Comments