I decided to go back and rework some of my data from March and see what I could come up with. After reprocessing my Rosette & Cone wide field image in a simulated SHO palette, I decided to try and do the Orion and Horsehead wide field shot.

I did the stacking, channel combining and initial processing in Astro Pixel Processor then took the image over to Photoshop. I had to do it separately for the longer exposure and then the shorter exposure to create two separate images to use to try and combine them to soften the blown out core a bit. I believe my long exposures where simply too long to be real effective, but I was able to soften it a bit. I needed the longer exposure to pull out the detail in the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae, so I will need to research a bit more if I try this again in the future. I am thinking I may need to take three different data sets at different exposures and combine them over two. For reference, I have been using AstroBackyard’s Tutorial on HDR Composites. As always, Trevor Jones provides a lot of good information!

Image Information:

120 x 60s
60 x 10s
Darks, flats, dark flats and biases for both sets
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TPO Ultrawide 180 Astrophotography Lens
Canon EOS Ra
Optolong L-eNhanced Filter
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO asi 224mc (guide)