Horsehead/Flame colors

[dx_ron]

Thanks, Mike!

[astroimagery]

Very nice images! What I've always found with this target, especially imaging it with my DSLR previously was that I see so many images online with different colours for the Flame and the Background of the Horsehead. My colours tend to be very close. I wonder why that might be. I've tried hydrogen-alpha and RGB filters.

Time to image again now that I have a ZWO ASI533 MC PRO?

[Mike in Rancho]

Very nice images! What I've always found with this target, especially imaging it with my DSLR previously was that I see so many images online with different colours for the Flame and the Background of the Horsehead. My colours tend to be very close. I wonder why that might be. I've tried hydrogen-alpha and RGB filters.

Time to image again now that I have a ZWO ASI533 MC PRO?

Hi Karl!

By close do you mean not much difference between the red wall and orange flame? And perhaps more importantly how did you composite your narroband + broadband data?

Duoband OSC only horseheads of course have limited hues (two!) and their blended regions, so the flame is only marginally differentiable from the red wall behind the horse. That's seen quite often, and I did one too with my DSLR that ended up just like that. LRGBHa, RGBHa, or OSC RGB + OSC duo/Ha, if composited mainly as broadband but with NB Accents, should permit decent differentiation - red for the wall, the usual orange for the flame - but with possible care (or even reversal) needed for continuum Ha.

If you composited Ha into a channel (generally R), however, or perhaps even usage of narrowband as L, well then things could end up in the "roll of the dice" territory?

[astroimagery]

I have imaged it in both broadband (optolong l-pro and a duo band filter). I have only recently been able to get a different colour since using my ASI533 MCPRo. I guess it was the processing that made the difference.

Here is an image I took of the horsehead nebula in 2021 on this page:

https://astroimagery.com/astrophotograp ... otography/


This is taken with the new camera; you can see how close the colours are.