first light with OSC - Messier 42 - colour help

[mindburner]

This is my first try with the Atik 428ex OSC camera which I purchased from Coco as the next step in my imaging quest. I was using the supplied Artemis capture software for imaging. It's a bit of a dark art getting the exposure settings right to see the image properly.

I tried to process as my usual workflow in Nebulosity but I was getting lifeless, over smoothed and washed out images.

I have a older version of Maxim Dl so I tried it and got better results, although I had to stretch the image quite a bit to get the nebulosity in the nebula.

M42 is a hard one I think anyway as to get the faint 'wispys', one usually has to blow out the core with over exposure.

I took some 1 min suns and some 30 second ones to combine to get a better core.

The result is better. The software seems to make a big difference to the resulting image?!

Compare to my full spectrum Canon 1100d DSLR the resulting image is more red.

I also did a version using the auto colour correct in Photoshop

7 x 6 min subs

1 x 10 min sub

1 x 30 second sub

1 x 60 second sub

no darks, flats or bias

PS auto colour applied

Linkto original FITS files

any tips on processing these OSC images would be greatly received.

[mindburner]

another version, his time with astroart demo, hence the screen print

[Jessun]

I think it's a great image! Plenty of colour, and you can always boost saturation to your liking.

As always adding more subs on this would bring out more. You really just got started...

Most rely on separate exposures for core and the rest - merging them using layers.

I looked at the files, but to be honest it's easier if you just upload the complete stack. Or perhaps two for this target. One stack for the short core exposures being the extra one.

/Jesper

[VigdisVZ]

Wow, great image. Love the color.