Horsehead & Flame Nebulae (revisited)

After four perfect nights out in New Mexico (two observing and two photographing smaller fields of view) I had but half of my final night to try out for the first time New Mexico Sky's wider-field Takahashi refracting telescope. Although I've photographed this with my Canon Digital Rebel before, and the Horsehead and Flame nebulae separately, they have never come out this good! Sadly the skies became skunked and I was barely able to complete one to three 15 and 16 minute exposures each of luminance, red, green and blue channels (a technique I never used before) and then assembled them and tinkered with the image until I got the results that you now see (click on for larger image). I did my best to hide the three satellites that sailed through the field of view.