Flame and Horsehead

[26Left]

Hello all,

Inspired by an article in this month's SaN magazine, I thought I'd have a crack at the Flame and Horsehead Nebulae, and here is the result:

This is the result of 35 x 3.5 minute subs at ISO800 using my Nikon D7000 and Meade 5000 5" refractor. I'd have liked more data to help bring the noise down, but I lost ten subs to satellite trails! Perhaps I should have done a little research first, but what surprised me was how big and bright the Flame is - it was a fairly easy target. In fact, the hardest part of this image was the initial framing of it. I wanted to capture the horsehead as well, but it was almost impossible to see in my test shots.

I seem to learn something new each time I image. I had read somewhere that it is best to guide on a star that is as close as possible to the target. For this image, I guided on Alnitak (you can't get any closer). The guiding was absolutely perfect. It's usually easy to find a nearby guidestar with Nebulae, but much harder for galaxies, which are not on the plane of the Milky Way.

I hope you enjoy the picture. As always, comments (both positive and negative) are very welcome.

Cheers,

Tom.

[SJJ]

That's a very nice image Tom. Is your camera modded?

[Looking Up]

Very good image Tom, both the flame and horse are so clear,fab colour as well! This is my next target!

Spencer

[Stargazer Jack]

Amazing, well done

[26Left]

That's a very nice image Tom. Is your camera modded?

Thanks. No, the camera's not moded. A bog standard Nikon D7000. This is my third Nikon, and I've always found them pretty sensitive to Ha.

Looking Up: I've worked hard in the last year on getting colours right. Light polution here doesn't help, although luckily, it's not too bad to my south-east.

What I need to work on is a way not to let bright stars like Alnitak overwhelm a picture. Not enough clear nights to experiment

Tom.

[Quatermass]

Same here read that and thought id give it a go. its a great image and a real thrill to discover for the first time dont you think. first time dsos are my favourites like discovering buried treasure arrrghh jim lad :beer:

Sent from my GT-S5670 using Tapatalk

[26Left]

Same here read that and thought id give it a go. its a great image and a real thrill to discover for the first time dont you think. first time dsos are my favourites like discovering buried treasure arrrghh jim lad :beer:

I agree. You can research on the size of the target and its surface brightness, but you don't really know what you'll get until that first sub

[Paul N]

This is just amazing, nice work!

[SamAndrew]

Thanks, Great pic

I also read that and gave it a go last week, only had my new scope a few weeks, and didn't think I had much chance from my back garden with the light pollution, and the trees forced me to take the shot while it was still low in the sky.

At the time i didn't think i'd captured it, as I wasn't sure it was in the frame, but I was thrilled to just about make out the Horse head from the pollution later when proccessing it

[cloudbuster]

lovely colours....a super effort showing what u can do with un-modded.

[SJJ]

Tom, you give hope to us all with un-modded cameras. Can't wait to have a go at it in the new year. Keep the pics coming.

[ollypenrice]

Great stuff.

Are you sure you needed to ditch your sat trailed images? Using a sigma reject stacking system they might well disappear. If they don't, you still have some options. The Healing Brush in Ps can handle them or you could do a full stack with trails and an edited one without. Paste the trailed one on top and then erase the trails. You'll get the noise reduction of the deep stack on all the image bar the places where the trails were.

Olly

[26Left]

That's a good idea Olly. The spot healing brush in PS is a great tool. I sometimes use it where dark frame subtraction has left a dark hole in the image. Two separate stacks sounds a good idea too.

I've still got all the data I captured, si I'll give it a go.

[26Left]

As per Olly's suggestion, I restacked this image using the subs I had rejected due to satellite trails. I ended up with a faint trail through the Flame, but I used the PS Spot Healing brush on it.

The addition of more data has made the resulting image a bit brighter and the noise easier to deal with.

The other difference is that I did not use GradientXTerminator on this image. I normally use it early in the workflow to remove any gradients and set the sky to grey. The problem was that, with so much nebulosity in this region, GradientXTerminator may have removed some of the nebulosity below the Horsehead.

In some ways, the original image had more impact. But, this one's quite nice. And, most importantly, it has proved that satellite trails can be removed.

Thanks for the tip Olly.

Cheers,

Tom.

[prokyon]

Hi Tom,

much better now. Very nice! Satellite trails mean more work but not the losing of data!

Regards

Werner

[Tom OD]

Good pic Tom, the Sat trail is removed well with AA4, but even better with AA5 if you use them. As you've found, the clone stamp and healing brush can sort it out.

Good colour and signal, well done.

Tom.

[26Left]

Good pic Tom, the Sat trail is removed well with AA4, but even better with AA5 if you use them. As you've found, the clone stamp and healing brush can sort it out.

Good colour and signal, well done.

Tom.

Thanks Tom. But, what's AA4 and AA5?

[alpal]

As per Olly's suggestion, I restacked this image using the subs I had rejected due to satellite trails. I ended up with a faint trail through the Flame, but I used the PS Spot Healing brush on it.

Cheers,

Tom.

Good photo.

I would have used a hide all layer mask in Photo Shop &

left your first picture underneath then brushed it through as per one of the tutorials here:

http://www.atalas.net/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=4

In any case - you have removed the satelite trails!

[Demonperformer]

That is a really nice image, Tom

[26Left]

Hi all,

I collected some more subs this week and restacked the image. There are 80 subs now and this has helped bring out a little more nebulosity and made it easier to keep the noise under control.

Taken with my Nikon D7000 and Meade 5000 127mm APO.

Cheers,

Tom.

[Zul]

So detailed! Fantastic!