M45 - First RGB Image in a year!

[Xiga]

Had some nice clear skies last weekend, so I simply had to take advantage of them, even though the temps dropped to -4 on the Saturday night! Thankfully i was able to just move the car a few metres and use the frost-free ground underneath to set up. And boy, what a god send Team Viewer is! I Once i was all set up, i was able to monitor it all from inside the house.

Most of the neighbour's had selfishly decided to light fires, how inconsiderate of them, lol. It was quite annoying though i have to say, seeing all the smoke at times billowing across my FOV! Thankfully i stayed up late though, so i outlasted most of them  It was easily the most productive 2 nights I've had so far. The skies were completely clear all night long on both nights. In the end i managed 11 hrs worth of exposure in total over the 2 nights. I still need to process the Soul Nebula subs (Ha and OIII), hope to get to that later this week, but for now here's the other object i was shooting, good old M45.

So this is 2 hrs 40 mins (16 x 600s) using the Nikon D5300a and an IDAS-D1 filter.

30 Flats, 50 Bias, with aggressive dithering.

Captured with Sequence Generator Pro, stacked in Astro Pixel Processor, and processed in Photoshop.

I may have gone too far with the processing (i tend to do that), what do you guys think? I had an earlier version which was sooooo much smoother, but it was seriously lacking in visible nebulosity, so i kept going! Plus, i wanted to try and eek out some of the surrounding dust, which i just managed to get. I might end up reducing it by 50% in size, due to the noise, haven't decided yet though. C&C welcome as always of course!

The last RGB image i did was a brief go at M42 about a year ago, and that was also taken from home using the same filter. I had forgotten just how hard RGB processing is when not captured from a dark sky!

ps - I've also added a version below with some funky diffraction spikes. Just for fun of course! Although i actually don't mind them 

[MARS1960]

That's a cracking M45, very nice indeed.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Really nice!

[Xiga]

11 minutes ago, MARS1960 said:

That's a cracking M45, very nice indeed.

 

7 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Really nice!

Thanks guys

[alan potts]

Very nice images, I don't feel you have over done it, for me it is if it believeable, this is, some over colour an image for my tastes, these aran't. I actually like the spikes in some images, it works for me on M45.

[Filroden]

1 hour ago, Xiga said:

I had forgotten just how hard RGB processing is when not captured from a dark sky!

You result makes it look easy! You've achieved an impressive result, though I do have to check...is that dust in the image or just smoke from your neighbours'?

[Xiga]

34 minutes ago, alan potts said:

Very nice images, I don't feel you have over done it, for me it is if it believeable, this is, some over colour an image for my tastes, these aran't. I actually like the spikes in some images, it works for me on M45.

Thanks Alan!

26 minutes ago, Filroden said:

You result makes it look easy! You've achieved an impressive result, though I do have to check...is that dust in the image or just smoke from your neighbours'?

Cheers Ken!

I had wondered the very same thing, lol. So I kept a reference image at hand while I was processing it. The faint bright and dark lanes seemed to match fairly well, so I think I got lucky

 

[alexbb]

1 hour ago, Xiga said:

So this is 2 hrs 40 mins (16 x 600s) using the Nikon D5300a and an IDAS-D1 filter.

The last RGB image i did was a brief go at M42 about a year ago, and that was also taken from home using the same filter. I had forgotten just how hard RGB processing is when not captured from a dark sky!

Fantastic result! I don't know about your not dark sky, but I'm far to see that much dust in double exposure time, F4 300mm lens on a mono cooled camera under orange light pollution.

[Xiga]

3 minutes ago, moise212 said:

Fantastic result! I don't know about your not dark sky, but I'm far to see that much dust in double exposure time, F4 300mm lens on a mono cooled camera under orange light pollution.

Thanks Alex!

I can't complain about the skies I have to say. They're not too bad at all. Here's a link showing the LP where I live (Crumlin village):

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=10&lat=7288583&lon=-692096&layers=B0FFFTFFFF

I've taken a couple of images at a proper dark sky site, down at Delamont, and it's so much better. There's no need to use an LPF, and I could expose for well over 10 mins there and still not be sky glow limited. It's only about a 45 min drive away, but the issue with it is safety more than anything, as youths like to drive their cars through it at night so I would never go alone. Plus, I hate the thought of packing everything up and driving there only to find that the clouds have rolled in just after I've set up, lol.

[Xiga]

I threw the Soul Nebula data together in 20 mins, just to see what i had. Came up with the version below.

Looking forward to processing it properly now 

 

[MikeODay]

Wonderful images.  I really like the detail in the nebula and dust clouds and I love the colours. 

[tooth_dr]

Amazing for under three hours! I too really enjoyed those two clear nights we had, esp at the weekend! Plenty of raw data to practice on.