Flame and Horsehead Nebulae 18-01-2015 Manche, France

[The Thing]

My first serious attempt, 20x300s @iso800 or 1h40m which is not really enough. Add to that the stars are pants and Alnitak is way bright and has a vast halo. I was going to process it in StarTools to sort the stars but it has started crashing all the time   What's new.

But I'm happy for a first attempt.

Image date, time and location:   2015-02-15 22:33-00:53 Gonneville, Manche, France
Telescope aperture and focal ratio:   Meade LX90 8" UHTC, Baader Alan Gee Telecompressor 2 @ f6.3
Camera and filters used:           Canon 1000D, IDAS LPS-D1 filter, Brightstar OAG, QHY5LII Mono
Processing applied:                   DeepSkyStacker, LightZone

[Mike]

Alnitak looks like a giant cosmic eye.

[MarkS]

I reckon there's a lot more you can stretch out of that.  But Altinak is definitely a real pain, as is often the case.

I would stretch it to get more brightness in the Horsehead and Flame and let Altinak do just what Altinak does.

Mark

[Carole]

I agree with Mark.  Alnitak is a real PITA on this target. 

Good capture.

Carole

[Ivor]

Looks like this has good potential. I had a go at this a while ago and the only application I found that could suppress Altinik was Iris. Mark gave me the workflow in this thread http://forum.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/index.php?topic=8795.0;all

[JohnP]

Looking really god Duncan.  As others have suggested I would like to see a version processed for the horse.. looks like there is a ton more in there..

John

[RobertM]

I'd totally agree with JP.  Either try to forget about Alnitak or process for each - yes I know, much harder than it sounds

If you Photoshop it (and I'm not thinking of Keira's boobs here) you can use the lasso tool and selectively reduce the ring and bright area around Alnitak.  There are a few examples on the web somewhere on how to do that.  Processing should end up being much easier.  You can also protect that area and stretch the rest, though that is beyond my basic PS skills.

Good luck !

Robert

[Carole]

I normally stretch in layers if I have a problem such as this one.

Stretch the top layer and then rub out the offending bit revealing the less stretched Alnitak below. 
Sometimes I do this in several small step iterations.

Or

As Robert suggests put a feathered loop around the part you don't want stretched, but this has to be done very carefully and in small steps, and doesn't always work very well, so I normally do the layered method above.

Carole

[RobertM]

rub out the offending bit

[The Thing]

I'm going to give it a go. I will start by re-stacking in IRIS, doing the ASINH magic, then CS2.

[Fay]

Blaze on Duncan!

Robert no one else was thinking of Kiera!!!!!

[The Thing]

Bit of a reprocess to tame Alnitak and bring out the nebulae. I hadn't used Photoshop CS2 since it first came out :{ and have forgotten a lot, plus I was doing web images back then not astro art!