First Orion for this season

[alexbb]

Hello all!

I acquired yesterday the third hydrogen panel of this area. I might add 2 more below, in landscape. We shall see how the weather plays. 2.5h each panel in 300s subs at unity gain. And some 30s exposures for the core. Camera is ASI1600MMC on the Canon 300 F4 L lens, cooled to -15C. And first successful try with the Astro Pixel Processor, though, the stacks were made with DSS. I just purchased APP and I didn't restack them.

I'm not sure if I should add more hydrogen data or move to oxygen and then LRGB. I still have time to decide until Feb-March.

More details: http://www.astrobin.com/317154/

Comments welcomed.

Clear skies,

Alex

[RichLD]

Very nice  job!

[wimvb]

Stunning mono image of this area. LRGB may be difficult with those bright stars in the field of view.

[swag72]

That's great!!! I love the detail in this ..... Ha really does sing in this area for sure  

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Excellent result, love how the famous nebulae rise out of the extended nebulosity. Which Ha filter did you use please?

[ollypenrice]

That's a cracker, an absolute cracker.

I agee that you may struggle to keep the stars down in broadband but OIII should play well. I'd be wondering what a bicolour HaOIII would do with star colour from a quick RGB shoot, gently stretched.

These cameras are getting more tempting by the day.

Olly

[Allinthehead]

That's a fabulous image Alex. I can't wait to get the Samyang on this area. 

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

These cameras are getting more tempting by the day.

I'd like to see what you could do with one. The Atik version of this is due out soon. 

[alexbb]

Many thanks to you all!

I used the Optolong 7nm Ha filter.

I will shoot some O3 at some point and combine into HOO, but I still want to add some RGB, not only for stars. I feel sorry for NGC 2024 and 2023 not to have them as RGB. I might try to remove the stars from the RGB image, add it like this, colour the NB stars with the colour of the RGB ones and add the coloured stars back into the combination. Still, there's some time to wait for this.

I edited the first post and added a slight more stretched version.

And here's a version processed by a friend of mine: https://ibb.co/mbjAd6

Of all, which do you prefer?

Thank you again and clear skies,

Alex

[alexbb]

I felt that the horsey was a bit too close to the border so I shot 2 more panels below. The result is in the edited original post.

[Allinthehead]

That's special now that you've opened it up a bit. Awesome.

[Guest]

Absolutely outstanding - can't wait to try nb on this object myself - but I'm not going to match this effort, ever! :-)

David

[StargeezerTim]

Beautiful. This patch of sky really is awe inspiring. 'Awesome' as my 7 year old granddaughter says! 

[alexbb]

Many thanks to you all!

David, it took me 5 nights, but I could have covered the same area with 4 panels only. All you need is a wide TS65, an ASI1600MMC, a Ha filter and 4 clear nights Now... where could you find those?!

[alexbb]

I shot 4 more panels to cover the same area and increase the SNR. Now for a total of more than 22 hours. The result is at the bottom in the edited original post.

Much smoother I think.

https://www.astrobin.com/317154/D/

And below the M42 core. 24x10s with the same Canon 300 F4 L IS, ASI1600MMC.

Thanks for looking and clear skies!

Alex

[alexbb]

It's been a while since I started this, but I only had 5 usable nights for OIII and even with those, I was not able to acquire all what I wanted. The 2 OIII panels at the bottom are stacks of 20-22 x5 minutes subs. The ones at the top are 30-31 x5min. Anyway, there's not much oxygen at the bottom area.

I tried to lift a lot the blue around the flame and NGC2023, but without much impact to the flame.

The O3 filter is a pain, it reflects a lot. A lot. With the non AR coated sensor, I had huge halos, they are tamed down in the image below.

I could have sharpened more the core area, but I didn't want to exaggerate.

Ha as red-ish - 22.5h, O3 as cyan-blue - 9h. Perhaps still too red.

I don't even know what else to add to this description, it tired me a lot yesterday to process it and drained my energy since October.

Make sure you watch at full resolution. Here's also a direct link to an original: https://drive.google.com/open?id=17tr8lqagQAJg8maojtHZPbM-f67gSBTv

Any opinions are welcomed!

Clear skies!

Alex

[StargeezerTim]

You should start a new thread with that last image. It is absolutely awe inspiring, fabulous!

[alexbb]

15 hours ago, StargeezerTim said:

You should start a new thread with that last image. It is absolutely awe inspiring, fabulous!

Many thanks, Tim! I think I should