Now that I'm full blown into this hobby, my Dad (a former amateur film astrophotographer) always talks about how he was never able to capture the Horsehead Nebula because of the lengthy exposure times required. Taking his hint, I decided to shoot it for him and further I am getting it printed as a Christmas present.

I've seen countless photos of these objects from others, but seeing it for the first time as captured from my camera was exciting. However, processing was a nightmare, as I expected. I decided to not even attempt to tackle the infamous ZWO ASI1600 square diffraction patterns around Alnitak and σ Orionis. A better imaging train is required to avoid these artifacts in the first place. Additionally, it took me hours and hours to find the right process of using Ha as a luminance layer. Detailed below is how I finally did it for anyone curious. Enjoy.

Processing Details:

Pre-processing (for each channel):

- Blink

- ImageCalibration

- CosmeticCorrection

- SubframeSelector

- StarAlignment

- ImageIntegration

- DrizzleIntegration

- DynamicCrop

Ha:

- Deconvolution: DynamicPSF, star mask for local support, masked w/ starless binary range mask

- MultiscaleLinearTransform: lightness NR, masked w/ inverted low contrast mask

R:

- BackgroundModelization

- LinearFit to Ha

HaR:

- PixelMath: (R*0.2)+(Ha*0.8)

G/B:

- BackgroundModelization

- LinearFit to R

- LinearFit to HaR

[HaR]GB:

- BackgroundNeutralization

- ColorCalibration

- MultiscaleLinearTransform: lightness NR, masked w/ inverted low contrast mask

- MultiscaleMedianTransform: chrominance NR, maked w/ inverted low contrast mask

- LinearFit to Ha

- HistogramTransform: stretched non-linear

Ha:

- HistogramTransform: stretched non-linear

Ha[HaR]GB:

- LRGBCombination: Ha as luminance layer, 0.75 L channel weight, 0.625 lightness, 0.425 saturation

- TGVDenoise: luminance for local support, masked w/ inverted low contrast mask

- HDRMultiscaleTransform: 40% amount using PixelMath

- LocalHistogramEqualization: large structures, masked w/ inverted starless luminance mask

- LocalHistogramEqualization: medium structures, masked w/ starless luminance mask

- DarkStructureEnhance

- HistogramTransformation: equalized background color, masked w/ inverted luminance mask

- MorphologicalTransformation: reduced star sizes, masked w/ star mask

- ExponentialTransformation: lightened background, masked w/ inverted luminance mask