M42

[geordie85]

After many "failed" attempts at this target I've finally got a half decent photo I'm happy to share.

May be abit over processed as I spent a whole day on it but just can't seem to get it right.

Skywatcher 200p on an eq5

Modded canon 600D

QHY5L-II for guiding

20x 300 second subs

10x 5 second subs for the core

Processed in photoshop cs5

Edit: conversion to jpeg seems to have made the bottom and left side go abit weird

[MarsG76]

Great work.. looks great. Heaps of detail there...

[ollypenrice]

Well done. It's a remarkably hard target.

Personally I'd back off on the smoothing a little. A bit of honest texture never did any harm.

Olly

[laudropb]

Very good attempt.

[JR1987]

Looks fantastic, I love the faint nebulosity connecting m42 to the running man.

[Stub Mandrel]

Well done. It's a remarkably hard target.

Personally I'd back off on the smoothing a little. A bit of honest texture never did any harm.

Olly

Is there a good shot somewhere that sets a good target for beginners to work towards - both in terms of colours and textures?

The Hubble shot is great but has so much detail...

[xtreemchaos]

great image mate, nice to see your putting the 200p to good use, i like to see spikes on the stars, well done. thanks for sharing, charl.

[geordie85]

Thanks for the comments.

Unfortunately it was topaz labs noise reduction that had smoothed the image. I'll be collecting more data tomorrow night to add to this so hopefully a reprocess will help keep the detail more vivid.