A little M78

[MattJenko]

Here is a proper go with my new AA115. M78, the often overlooked nebula in Orion. This was a couple of sessions worth, one with a finder-guider, and the second with a strapped on ST80. The ST80 worked much better - there was some pretty obvious flexure issues with the first setup. I used my little Atik for this rather than the ASI1600, mostly because I wanted to get an image from the clear skies and couldn't face the inevitable battle with flattener spacings, so I chose the smaller sensor to effective duck the issue for now. 

The Atik is hooked up to a filter wheel with ZWO filters. 70 x 5min L and 15 x 5min RGB. The mount was an AzEQ6. I thought there was something wrong with it on the first night, but with a more secure guiding system, even the guiding was better and the subs tighter. 

This was a tricky image for me to process. So much so that I re-subscribed to Adobe to get access to Photoshop, since I let it lapse last year having become such a PixInsight fanboy. Still haven't dare open it yet though!

Feedback welcome as always and I hope that this year carries on the same in terms of imaging sessions, as it has been great so far!

[Allinthehead]

Nice job Matt.

[simmo39]

V nice, another to add to my list of future targets.

[stepping beyond]

Stunning !

[cfpendock]

I like that, especially the colours.

Chris

[ollypenrice]

Wow, you have some real stuff going on in the blues, there. Structure and detail we very rarely see. Well done, this is the devil's private object so far as I'm concerned!

Olly

[gorann]

Yes, very nice with some fine details there in the blue - like looking into a hidden world (which is of course exactly what we are doing here).

For my very personal taste I would probably try to make the dusty areas a little bit less lilac (maybe more towards brown - at least I do not find that lilac in a quick look at similar M78s on the net). For fun I would also try some more sharpening just to see what it would do to the image (like Enhance Local Contrast in Noel's actions and Unsharp Mask now when you got PS again).

[RobertI]

Beautiful image of a fascinating object. As you say, not seen so often. Looks like the scope is working well. 

[PatrickGilliland]

That is coming together nicely Matt difficult target but some nice detail, colour and structure there.

Paddy