M42 Two Nights (WIP)

[jnc71106]

Winter Project

 

23 x Lum 5 mins

4 x Red 5 mins

4 x Green 5 mins

4 Blue 5 mins

+ a few short ones for the core

This is 2 nights worth of data so far. Sadly night 2 was cut short by patchy cloud so i'm very short of colour data, still very much a work in progress and i haven't spent as much time as normal processing the data so it might be a little rough around the edges

 

I'd like to get another 3 good nights on this but with the UK weather the plan might have to change

full res image can be seen here http://tokolosheastro.weebly.com/images.html

[tingting44]

Fabulous image Jake! going to be a stunner once its done

[ollypenrice]

That is excellent. The standard of M42 images seems to rise every year. You've done a great job on the dynamic range but the only thing I'd say about the core is that it lacks colour and has a bit of a greyscale look. My own thinking on the core was not to shoot it in L at all because L is there to catch more signal. With the core you are looking for less rather than more, for once! I'd give it a burst of short RGB to colour the core and lift the saturation as you blend it because colour seems to burn out easily from bright signal.

Your outer dust is lovely. How brown it should be is anybody's guess but I like yours as it is.

Olly

[jnc71106]

Cheers Martin

Thanks Olly I had noticed the lack of colour in the core and when I'd gathered more data I was going to try reprocessing without the short Lum to see if it helped so many thanks for confirming my thinking

[red dwalf]

Very nice.

[ollypenrice]

Cheers Martin

Thanks Olly I had noticed the lack of colour in the core and when I'd gathered more data I was going to try reprocessing without the short Lum to see if it helped so many thanks for confirming my thinking

If you have an Ha filter another trick for the Trapezium is to shoot it in Ha and use the result as luminance, very locally and discretely, to tighten up that tiny region.

Olly