M42 - 1st go at processing in Pixinsight

[AstroJOE]

Captured this Friday night, mix of 600s, 60s and 30s subs. Darks, flats and dark flats added and stacked in DSS. Been playing around with Pixinsight this week and this is my first proper go at processing something with it.... lots to learn but Harry's tutorial's have come in handy. The core is blown obviously and I'm not sure why but it still doesn't look quite right.... Nevermind though, it's a million miles better than I was able to achieve the last time M42 came around so I'm happy that things are heading in the right direction.

As always....advice and criticism welcome please

James 

[Starwiz]

Nice image, I'm looking forward to having a go at that one myself.

I've read about taking two sets of lights, one for the overall image and one set for the core, then combining them to produce an image where both core and full nebula look good.  

John

[Filroden]

6 minutes ago, Starwiz said:

Nice image, I'm looking forward to having a go at that one myself.

I've read about taking two sets of lights, one for the overall image and one set for the core, then combining them to produce an image where both core and full nebula look good.  

John

Indeed. i did just that yesterday combining 1s subs with 30s subs and it seems to work.

M42 feels like it should be an easy target but there is so much range to have to manage (especially as my camera is only 12bit) that it's really difficult to process. Your colours are very different to my own and I'm loving the deeper red you've achieved.

[Starwiz]

Did the core look good in your 1s subs?  And if so, did you use layer masking to produce the final image?  

John

[AstroJOE]

Mine was mix of 600s, 60s, 30s and 5s....I think the 600s x 9 were too much for the 10x of each I did for the rest of the subs....I've stacked different length subs before on M42 and achieved a much better outcome on the core (albeit a far worse final image). I'll be having another go this week (weather permitting) so may be ill increase the volume of shorter subs and see how that goes.. 

[Starlight 1]

Here you go try this link. Compositing 2 Different Exposures via Layer Masks

[wimvb]

There are two ways in PI to tame the dynamic range of this target.

1. hdrcomposition, which lets you combine different exposures

2. hdrmultiscaletransform, for which you only need one image.

As long as the core isn't overexposed or overstretched, you can use hdrmt. use median transform to lightness with a lightness mask. Just don't overdo it, hdrmt is a power grinder.

It may be easier to use if your first stretch is masked stretch, followed by histogram transform.

Btw, in the above image, there seems no detail in the core, so it was either overstretched or overexposed. hdrmt can't correct this.

Good luck