Orion and the comet

[Paul81]

Hi All,

Nice clear night last night so I finally got my chance for a first glimpse at comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy. I played with both the asinh and x^0.25 stretching modes in LL but decided that the x^0.25 mode gave the best view of the comets tail (I also think there is a very faint galaxy in the top left quadrant - this showed up better using asinh).

At this point I was already getting cold, but thankfully it was dinner time so left the kit out waiting for Orion to be in prime position for my garden. No tour of Orion is complete without a first stop to the mesmerising M42 The Great Orion nebula. I found that the non-linear stretch functions really helped bring out the faint whispy parts of the nebula without burning out the core. I couldn't decide between asinh or x^0.25 on this particular target, so here they are both:

(asinh)

(x^0.25)

As everyone knows, the running man (NGC 1973) lies right next to the great nebula, so this was the next stop. Here I think asinh was the better option helping to bring out the lovely dust lanes.

I'd love to get a view of the whole area using a finder scope arrangement, or a DSLR lens attached to the Lodestar.

And of course it goes without saying the amazing Horsehead Nebula (IC434) cannot be ignored. Sum stacking is definitely the method of choice here (I also tried a median stack of the same duration but the sum was far better) combined with asinh scaling.

Next the scope was nudged in a slight upwards direction to NGC2024 The Flame Nebula. This is another stunning object in Orion (there are so many), and for me using x^0.25 scaling and sum stacking its possible to observe a lot of the intricate dust structures which make the nebula look exactly what its name suggests!

Finally to round off the tour, the reflection nebula M78. I find this a really faint object, with the best views using x^0.25 scaling.

At this point I was frozen so packed up for the night. I need to tweak the collimation and dial down the focal reduction as I struggled to get pin-point stars, but the more I use this little scope for EAA the more I like it. I was also pleased with the new scaling functions in LL, I found them very useful and I am looking forward to seeing how people get on over the coming weeks. I am going to play with a few more scaling modes (thanks Martin for the suggestion of sigmoid) for V0.12 as I think the 16-bit pixel depth is where some of the real power of the lodestar camera lies and having a toolbox of different scaling equations allows the observer to make best use of the photons captured.

Will also post some video tutorials... when I get a chance! 

Paul

[Martin Meredith]

Great work Paul. Pretty sure that the galaxy in the Lovejoy shot is UGC 2197 at mag 15.8. Good to see the comet moving through some galaxy fields in Triangulum over the coming week although I've yet to see this comet... 

I think I just about prefer the square root version of M42. The details you're capturing in the nebulosity are excellent without too much burn-out from the Trapezium. For cases like this perhaps you need an even more extreme mode?

cheers

Martin

[PatG]

Great selection of images Paul,

The new scaling / asinh scaling functions on your fantastic Lodestar Live version 0.11 software look very exciting indeed. I look forward to trying them out. 

Pat

[HiloDon]

Terrific results, Paul! Your LL non-linear scaling really makes a difference. I found the x^0.25 to work best in many cases. The Comet LJ is a good example. The tail is very difficult to get and usually really blows up the coma. Your capture is one of the best I have seen. I think a tutorial on the scaling feature of LL would be very helpful. I have been suggesting it's use in another forum, but I'm afraid my explanation is inadequate.

Thanks, again for all your hard work on LL. It's good to see that you're enjoying it, too.

Don

[johnno]

Great captures Paul,  picks out the 3 tails  on the comet and the horsehead stands out like a sore thumb. why have the latter ones gone grainy compared to the others which are smooth?

[arkosg]

I'd guess Paul's images vary in smoothness because his first few are median stacks, while the latter are sum stacked.

Cheers,

Greg A