Now this is the way to start the New Year!!

[Leveye 910]

Now this is the way to ring in the New Year. I took advantage of our unseasonal like crystal clear skies we are enjoying and forgo the traditional festivities and spend it under the stars. I was finally able to make another dream come true and at last image the Orion Nebula with my iOptron Zmount and AT65EDQ. With an amazing 5 hour session that wrapped up at about 3 in the morning here's the results. Let me know what you think of the processing.

15x5 seconds, 15x30 seconds, 15x120 seconds, 15x300 seconds. Each series went thru DSS and then blended together in PS4 and tweeked in LR4. 

The ORION Nebula by Leveye, on Flickr

[Zuben Elgenubi 95]

Wow, beautiful image!

[Johnny4365 42]

I know next to nothing about imaging, but that is a beautiful picture.

[nytecam 1,923]

Superb image - I know you're not supposed to see faces etc in these images but I can see 'sulking cat' :-)

[mdstuart 1,599]

ITs amazing. The wide view almost made me not recognise the Orion nebula..

Positively glows out of the screen.

Thanks for sharing.

Better than any new year fireworks.

Mark

[symesie04 911]

Wow really unusual to M42 in anything than the familiar pink/red hue. Really quite refreshing to see this blue rendition. I like it, very nice.

[daverave83 11]

What a great image, so much detail compared to mine.

the one thing we learn is the limit of exposures, originally i was doing 10 sec with no star trailing now im up to 30 secs with an aim for 60 sec subs. M42 is my favourite and the challenging horse head nebula which i trying to get.

[starman1969 333]

Beautiful image. Well done.

[lensman57 1,741]

Superb, well done and happy new year. Right now as the week before I am looking at a cloudy, windy and very wet sky.

Regards,

A.G

[majapala 58]

Fantastic thanks for sharing.

[lensman57 1,741]

Wow really unusual to M42 in anything than the familiar pink/red hue. Really quite refreshing to see this blue rendition. I like it, very nice.

The lack of  the pink and teal is because of the unmodded sensor ( lack of Ha in particular ) but it is quite attractive none the less.

A.G

[ollypenrice 24,115]

That's a really beautiful result. I might tweak the colour balance, personally, to move it away from the magentas but who cares? It's great as it is. Lovely job of blending the exposures. Lots of dust in a great FOV. It's a cracker, very obviously.

Olly

[AstroJones 10]

This looks brilliant, i really like the dust clouds

Well done!!

[K3ny0n 109]

That's really nice, very good job!

Rob.

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[sologuitarist61 1,583]

Very nice !!

[Crebles 241]

that's beautiful.

[russp 145]

Amazing image - I think it's one of the best I've seen, or at least one of the ones I like the best.

[Dreadz 54]

Another fantastic image. Yet another one to aspire to!

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[jgs001 967]

Lovely result. Works great in such a wide field and plenty of details.

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[x6gas 913]

Oh congratulations - I absolutely love that.  Terrific colour scheme, great field of view, real deft of touch on the processing.  In short, very, very good work.

I am, though, extremely jealous of your weather - we've had nothing but cloud and rain here!

[nmoushon 311]

Thats a great image! I would also tweak the color just a bit like Olly suggested and maybe do a light stretch. I think trying to pull out the fainter nebula might have pulled out a bit too much noise with it to. But thats still a bloom'n good image! Better than my 8hrs of data I got last year.