Witchcraft all the way...

[ollypenrice]

This nearly died the death. The FSQ85 with reducer couldn't control great flares from Rigel out of shot but I had some data Tom took in it without the reducer in his 11 meg so I put that underneath and erased my artefacts. Had to artificially flatten Tom's data in Pixinsight. Great programme. No darks either for the Tom data but AstroArt 5's Sigma popped out a pretty clean image.

Then I had to get the colour without the reducer in a 2 panel mosaic so I used the OSC camera and got a couple of all nighters for it. There were big gradients from Rigel but again Pixinsight could do it.

Getting any star colour was like getting blood out of a stone. Don't know why.

So this is 16.5 hours (9.5 lum in the mono and 7 in the OSC). Since the Witch is embedded in the collapsed side of Barnard's Loop it will be good to get an Ha layer to bring something to the background sky but that will be for later.

Olly

[Deneb]

Looking good as always Olly...is there a tint of ha in the nebula ...?

Nadeem.

[fwm891]

Looks great Olly - think I prefer the mono image though

Francis

[harry page]

Hi

Seems you have had fun putting it all together and give a great result

Far to low for me to do in the uk

Strange to see it the right way up

And of course excellent as always from you

Harry

[ollypenrice]

Looking good as always Olly...is there a tint of ha in the nebula ...?

Nadeem.

This was with the Baby Q, Nadeem. It's gigantic, the Witch. Yes, there is Ha in the region and the best images have an Ha layer which this will be getting if I'm spared.

Harry, yes, why does everone present this the wrong way up? Is it mainly S hemisphere imagers who shoot it? I think the visual balance is far better N up. It gives the impression of fizzling out when it's S up.

Francis, yes again, there is something limp-wristed about the colour! The Ha should 'magenta it up' a bit...

Olly

[Quatermass]

;)Fantastic image as usual

[Fenriz]

Wow incredible image Olly

[psemil]

This was the nebula I wanted to image when I started astro-photo.

I was hoping that you will succeed in making a color version when you showed us the B/w version.

Your picture is very inspiring.

[Earl]

Fantastic Olly!

now i wonder will all these Orion images be making a bigger picture

I really hope they do

[Avdhoeven]

Very nice object. Very nice image! I'm jealous

[PreludeToADream]

That is a lovely object and a lovely image.

Sent using Tapatalk

[Anweniel]

Superb as always Olly, looking closer there is some nice extra details in there not associated with the nebulosity

[R Fisher]

Super Image, like the subtle colour variations

[Spikey]

Witch way up is it ..... (geddit?)

Anyhow, thats a real corker and it stands out from the background so well, almost like smoke.

[NickK]

I'm wondering if Rigel's gradient is still present in the star colour (i.e. the gradient is removed from the background but not from the stars for some strange reason).

Have you looked at the spectra sensitivity of the sensor and the transmission spectra of each of the filters? Maybe mapping those into a corrective colour map could help - I know Neil (NL) played with this previously.

[ollypenrice]

I'm wondering if Rigel's gradient is still present in the star colour (i.e. the gradient is removed from the background but not from the stars for some strange reason).

Have you looked at the spectra sensitivity of the sensor and the transmission spectra of each of the filters? Maybe mapping those into a corrective colour map could help - I know Neil (NL) played with this previously.

Not a clue how I'd do that! The stars in this region don't seem to show much colour so I had to milk what there was. There is still one patch (upper left of the main nebula) in which I really recorded minimal star colour and failed to tease any out. I'm intrigued by this.

I hope an Ha layer will bring something to the background.

Olly

[dave_galera]

Brilliant image as usual Olly, and its one you don't see very often.

[Tim]

You HAVE to turn her the other way up Olly!!

Great stuff. Rigel does its utmost to spoil things as you say, but this is a great example.

I have just noted the other day that I can actually image this from home, but i'm not holding out any hope of catching much of that dust.

Cheers

Tim

[DugDog]

Nice shot Olly!

[JKB]

Beautiful picture Olly!! Wow!

Cheers

Jamie

[LukeSkywatcher]

Looks like a panther to me.

[ollypenrice]

I got round to blending in my telescopic Witch to my 85mm camera lens mosaic of Orion from last year. I only added it at a low percentage opacity to keep it looking natural but it makes a slight improvement, I think.

You can see the amount of Ha in the region and the need to get a good layer to finish the Witch Head properly.

Olly

[MikeWilson]

Beautiful image as we've come to expect, Olly! :-)

I especially like the composite showing it's place in Orion.

[mindburner]

stunning and very beautiful