This is the Horsehead Nebula, or Barnard 33, and the surrounding region:

The image is dominated by the glow of the star Alnitak, or Zeta Orions on the left side of the image, and the red glow of the nebula itself. Under Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024.

I took this image using a private remote observatory. The total integration time is over three hours of LRGB data.

The noise in this image was virtually non-existent so I did little noise reduction in post-processing. I processed this image using both MaxIM DL and PixInsight.

In MaxIM DL, I calibrated and stacked frames to produce the primary L, R, G, and B images and then moved to PixInsight for final processing. I used MaxIM DL for calibration because I understand how to calibrate using MaxIM DL and haven’t yet learned the process for PixInsight.

In PixInsight, I used the Photometric Color Calibration process to get the ideal color balance and used DBE to even out the background because the glow from the star created a gradient on the L and color images. I also used a touch of MLT and ColorSaturation along with HT.

I had captured this image using other telescopes. like the ones at Slooh.com and iTelescope.net, but was not satisfied with the results. This image is much better, despite the faint satellite trails which I wasn’t able to remove in post-processing.