Orion Nebula attempt #2

[nmoushon]

So I finally managed to get out and take another attempt at M42 after what seems like several weeks of bad weather and the full moon and try to put to use what some of you suggested from my last posting. So tonight I finally had amazing weather, besides it being 24 degrees out, and the moon was still not out yet so I grabbed my gear and decided to try my shots this time at 200mm instead of 300mm so I could get longer exposures. So I was able to use 114/130 3.2sec lights and 50 darks and they turned out way better than what I thought they would!

Here they are:

PS Test 1: Orion 200 11-18 test1 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

PS Test 3: Orion 200 11-18 test 3 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Test 2 was a bust by the way...just in case you were wondering.

I'm not pro at PS but I do know my way around pretty well but I still think I'm missing something in the shots that could help bring it out more. I know 3.2 sec isnt going to grab a lot of data but still think I can pull more stuff out. Only problem I'm having is I tend to burn out the center or bring out a lot of noise no matter what I do. Is this me or is there not much I can do about given my equipment?

[Jannis]

for only ~6 min total exposure, and that setup, i'd say the first one looks quite good to me at least. can even see the running man there

Test 3 i didn't liek too good. Clipped too much to get black background and no noise. Rather noise + details then neither of them..

Its possible to drag more out of it, but it's probably going to be hard without dragging any of the noise with you with only 6 min exposure.

M42 is nerly impossible to get perfect in one go. Need to take the core separatly to get it good.

[derekbcox]

good pics !

[nmoushon]

I agree with you Jannis and like the test 1 over test 3 because I can see more of the detail. I'm aware that to get a really good M42 you got to take several exposures at different setting to get the core just right. Since with my set up I can't really change any of the settings would it be possible to just make duplicate layers, in PS, and stretch each one differently to have a similar effect of different exposures and setting and then combine them?

[Quatermass]

The core is best dealt with by taking a shorter exposure and then using ps to fix it by using a hide all layer mask. If you take a 50 second shot and a 30 second shot and a 15 second shot that should give you what you need. Pm me if you need some help with the hide all layer mask and I will give you a hand with it.

[nmoushon]

Thanks for the tips Quatermass but all I have is my SLR and a camera tripod at the moment. Thats why I was wondering if making multiple layer and using different layer masks at different levels of being stretch if it would produce similar results as taking longer exposures.

[Jannis]

it shuold be possible to process the same image several times, yes. once with the core in focuse, and once with the more faint details. then with layers you add the core to the other picture where the core is burned out.

I've seen a very good example of m42 with very short subs like yours, just get enough of them and it can get extremply good and nerly completly free from noise, so dont give up even if you don't have an EQ tracking mount.

[nmoushon]

Awesome! I'll have to give it a try when I find some free time. I'll post my results some time later. Thanks for the tips.

[Quatermass]

Theres a link on the imaging tips section to a good tutorial doing layers for just that using the orion nebula not sure which one but its there in one of them.

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[Quatermass]

Here it is http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/LAYMASK.HTM

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[nmoushon]

So I finally got back around to testing out if I could do some layer masks to one of my images above to see if I could pull anything more out of it. I lost the RAW imagine so I had to reprocess the jpg I had.

Well here are before and after of what I accomplished. It's not much but can definitely tell there's a bit of improvement.