Orion Nebula Winter 2014/15

[Robp]

Hi all,

Back in October I started a thread For my winter imaging of the Orion Nebula.
My aim was to improve upon my first image over the course of the winter and see how I ended up.

I finally managed to get round to processing most of the data I captured back then so thought I'd share the results.
I think my biggest improvement actually came from equipment, not technique, as a purchase of a mono CCD to replace my DSLR helped me out immensely.

The image I started off with at the beginning of the winter/thread with my 450D was this:



For my CCD camera I had no RGB filters and only had a OIII filter for a short time so I mainly captured M42 in Ha.
This image contains the better OIII data I could gather. It consists of 5 hours 30 minutes of Ha and 1 hour 30 minutes of OIII all in 15 minutes exposure lengths, processed as a bicolour image with a synthetic green channel:

 

Scope: 130pds

Mount: HEQ5

Camera: ATIK 314L+ mono
Stacked in DSS and processed with photoshop.

As you can see I still have a long way to go! I have processed the data a couple of times and each time I end up with a different result. This was my favorite.
Hopefully next year I can pick the target back up again, increasing theOII data, expanding the image into a few more panes and adding some RGB into the mix as well.

Hope you enjoy the image as much as I enjoyed the journey, criticism/tips welcome

Rob

[toxic]

fantastic you should be well happy with that i know i would be great stars great nebula maybe just a little bit dark. well done indeed.

[Stephen Green]

 Hi Rob that is a very nice image

  Stephen

[xtreemchaos]

nice shots mate great colour,you must be well pleased "i would be" thanks for sharing.

[Robp]

Thanks all for your kind words.

I will have a go at making the image a little brighter toxic. I did attempt this before but I seemed to lose a lot of contrast in the process and wash out the colour, I just need to figure out the best way to do it .