M42 and Horsehead with Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 APO

[gorann]

Taken with Sigma 70-200 APO DG HSM f/2.8 at 200 mm and f/2.8. Clearly I will stop it down next time since there is a lot of coma but if you do not zoom in it looks rather good. I used Tony Hallas method (thanks to Olly that mentioned the method in some thread here) using Adobe Raw processing in Photoshop. This led to a great improvement compared to my first traditional attempt in Photoshop.

This procedure can even automatically compensate for some of the particularities of a specific lens, including this one (but it cannot beat coma).

Camera: Canon EOS 60Da
Exposure 5 x 180 s (ISO 2500) for most of the image and 11 x 60 s (ISO 1600) blended in for the M42 core

Here is Tony's video describing the procedure:

[aeut]

Very nice image, that looks incredible

[laudropb]

Very well done.

[BeanerSA]

I like. What mount did you use? Any guiding?

[Maximidius]

Love wide field images, something I want to get into. And this just shoved me one step closer. Great image!

[MartinB]

Great work with the DSLR and thanks for posting the video, Adobe Raw looks great.  Does it have to be integrated with PS or can you use it stand alone?

[gorann]

Thanks everyone!

Yes, if I just stop noticing the coma I am quite pleased. The camera was on a NEQ6 mount unguided. That is a bit of an overkill for a 2kg imaging system but it is what was sitting on my pier.

Yes, it is a plug-in for Photoshop so I am afraid that you need Photoshop (I use Photoshop CS5)

[wimvb]

Great one, congrats!

I was tempted to point my camera south yesterday evening to have a go at Orion, but it didn't clear the trees.

Should've asked for a chainsaw for Xmas in stead of a UHC filter, I guess.

[gorann]

Are they your trees or the neighbors'?

[paulastro]

I'd be very proud of that if I had taken it, no chance of that happening though!

[wimvb]

Are they your trees or the neighbors'?

They are mine. I hope the neighbours are far enough away for me to have a clear view to the south when I've cut down mine. The trees will be used by another neighbour who does really fancy woodworking, and what's left will be firewood.

As for using Adobe Camera Raw: I reproduced the results using Raw Therapee, which is an open source program. (For those of us who are doing  AP on a budget.)

I managed to redo an image of M31 (undithered, 16 usable lightframes) and of Cygnus (dithered, 5 light frames) with quite good results. Raw Therapee was great at removing hot pixels and chromatic aberration in the raw files. Stacked in DSS without any calibration frames. The result was quite good, considering all the shortcuts. This doesn't mean I will skip calibration frames alltogether; but in case there aren't any available, at least I now have a method to rescue my efforts.