Horsehead Nebula

allinthehead

Good evening all. I spent alot of time over the last week gathering data and learning new processing techniques. Part of that involved learning how to use pixinsight to stack, and some basic processing. I have to admit i found it to be quite a struggle, and counter intuitive. Having said that i think the pre processed stack turned out better than i could ever get with dss.

So this was stacked in pixinsight. Light stretching using an inverted mask and histogram transformation. Saved as tiff and switched to PS. I then did a screen mask invert. Some selective noise reduction to darker areas. Local contrast enhancement and Make stars smaller (noel carboni). Light curves and selective sharpening of brighter areas. I then put the image i saved after using pixinsight as a layer underneath and used the eraser on the bright stars to tone them down a little.

Image is 11hrs in 60 second subs captured using sgpro.

Hope you enjoy and any tips on how to improve most welcome.

Richard.


horsehead 11 hr stretch2 by Richard Sweeney, on Flickr

allinthehead

I did a second version with more contrast.

horsehead 11 hr stretch2 by Richard Sweeney, on Flickr

Peregrine

That's beautiful. Good job!

Tzetze

I like the second one better than the first and the first is excellent.
Would like to see the histograms - do you upload images to astrobin at all Richard?

allinthehead

Thanks Peregrine, and Tzetze.

https://www.astrobin.com/282888/B/?nc=user