Horsehead Nebula in HaLRGB (Dan Watt)

Horsehead Nebula in HaLRGB

So here is the Horsehead Nebula. Named after the dark nebula in the center. Because it looks like the head of a horse.The bright star on the left is Alnitak, the eastern most star of Orion’s Belt. The to left of that is the Flame Nebula. Because it looks like a flame.My favorite part is the blue nebula to the bottom left of the horsehead. That’s NGC2023. It’s got that name because some guy named John Dreyer was organizing all the spurious different objects astronomers were finding in the late 19th century and this was the 2023rd object on that list. It’s ten light years across and forming new stars as you read this.This image was shot over 8 nights using a combination of narrowband (hydrogen-alpha) and LRGB exposure. The narrowband was shot over four nights from my backyard in Los Angeles, and the LRGB was shot over four nights from a variety of locations around the Mojave, 200 miles away. One night at Amboy Crater, one night at Granite Pass, one night at Pisgah Crater (yes, that’s two different dormant volcanos) and one night from the Riverside Astronomical Society’s observatory site GMARS. I had to go to the observatory because my deep cycle batteries really need replacement so I needed somewhere to plug in. I’ve got about 40 hours cumulative exposure time on this one I think.This was also exciting since I finally switched from a DSLR to a cooled mono cam. I've been doing this for 12 years and figured I might as well make the switch sooner or later. The finer detail of the 268's sensor has revealed some issues with my scope that didn't bother me as much when using my modified 6D.Few things I’d do differently:

get rid of the MPCC for a better coma corrector. it does reduce coma to a decent degree it also increases the fwhm of the stars in the center of the image. Usually have seeing close to an arcsecond out here and the mount tracks about .8rms. After some testing with and without the MPCC the image is much sharper without (but much more coma of course).
Less RGB integration time, more L
Straighten out my spider vanes. Look st those sloppy diffraction spikes!

Cloudy Nights
SoCal Astrophotography

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