Me and M42!

[emyliano2000 1,928]

Hello guys!

I would like to tell you the story of my relationship with the Orion nebula. I hope you won't find it too boring!

Since I was a child I've been attracted by the night sky. I was making play-doh planets and space rockets all the time. When I was 12 I heard my father talking about something in space called The Great Orion nebula. Since then I was always looking at the night sky and wondering what it was and where it could be.

Over time, growing up, I kind of lost interest in it until in June 2016. I was watching a documentary about telescopes and the night sky and I decided to buy my first telescope. It was a only small newtonian. I wasn't really happy with it so I decided to send it back and get a bigger one, SW explorer 200p. I started documenting myself about the telescope and the night sky and I stumbled upon The Great Orion nebula, my childhood mystery space object. I was amazed by the photos, I couldn't belive my eyes. The childhood memories started to roll back in my mind and I was very excited to know more. In september 2016 I had the chance to go to a dark site and I hoped from the bottom of my heart I was gonna be able to see it with my own eyes. And guess what, I did. I was absolutely speechless, I had tears of joy in my eyes and felt how the gap that I had in my soul for such a long time is finally being filled. In that moment I thought to myself that I wanna capture this beautiful wonder of the night sky.
I started documenting myself again about astrophotography and in November 2016 I took my first DSO photo and guess what it was of? The Great Orion nebula of course. I took the photo through an eyepiece using my mobile phone. I was happier than you could ever imagine.
Of course I couldn't stop to that and I bought a Canon 700d, I sent it to Juan for a Baader mod and the first DSO photo taken with it was also of M42. 

After one year and 2 months since I started with AP I present you my latest achievement. It's not the best, or the worst but it's mine, my long loved mystery DSO.

M42, the Great Orion nebula and Sh2-279, The Running man nebula in the constellation of Orion, The Hunter.
Orion nebula is the closest stellar formation region found at a distance of around 1344 light years from Earth making it one of the brightest deep sky objects in the night sky.

First ever DSO photo. Single shot 10sec, ISO 800. Taken on 07/11/2016
Equipment:
Eq5 with enchanted dual axis motors.
SW 200P
Eyepiece (don't remember which one), Samsung Galaxy S6 and Bresser Mobile phone holder

Second photo. Single shot, 1sec ISO 1600. Taken on 26/11/2016
Equipment:
Eq5 with enchanted dual axis motors.
SW 200P, Canon 700D, Baader MPCC

Third photo 07/01/2018
Equipment used:
Hypertuned eq6 gen2
TS 65 quadruplet imaging telescope
Baader astromoded Canon 700D
IDAS LPS D1 clip in filter
Lacerta mgen standalone autoguider.
The photo is composed of 20x5sec, 20x30sec, 20x120sec and 20x300sec giving it a total integration time of 2.5 hours, with 50 flats and 100 bias frames all captured with APT, stacked and calibrated in Pixinsight and processed in Photoshop, Lightroom and Pixinsight.

 

Seeing wasn't great, the light pollution coming from London in the south-east and the humidity in the air prevented me from exposing more of the nebula's faint dust without bringing out a lot of noise in the photo. Might sound as an excuse but I really couldn't. Maybe I need more experience in processing.
Hopefully I will be able to add some more RGB data to it.
I still have to add 1.5 hours of Ha data but I haven't yet figured out how to get the color balance right as I'm getting a green tint all over the photo.

All the tips, comments and critics are more than welcome.

Thanks for looking!

Emil Andronic

[Charic 2,730]

24 minutes ago, emyliano2000 said:

I hope you won't find it too boring!

Not boring at all, in-fact quite interesting.
I have the Books, some knowledge, but not the right equipment (yet) but from the books I'm reading an ED80 (or a tad bigger) would suit my needs, whenever I venture down the astrophotography route, but for now, purely visual observations.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Charic

[MeyGray3833 223]

Wow, great story! Your last pic is a beauty! Well done.

If you are getting a green tint, maybe all you need to do is run the SCNR tool in PixInsight. Might help.

[Philip R 2,438]

Very nice Emil. Great story too.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Philip R

[emyliano2000 1,928]

1 minute ago, MeyGray3833 said:

Wow, great story! Your last pic is a beauty! Well done.

If you are getting a green tint, maybe all you need to do is run the SCNR tool in PixInsight. Might help.

Thank you!

I'm not at that stage yet. I only calibrated and did some basic noise reduction in PI. don't even know what SCNR tool is

[DarkAntimatter 42]

Beautiful images.  Great progression, but, truth be told, I even like the first one with the phone.  Can't wait to see the 4'th one.  

[Scott 5,218]

very nice indeed. there is a plugin for photoshop called HLVG (hasta la vista green) that does a good job of removing green

[emyliano2000 1,928]

9 minutes ago, Scott said:

very nice indeed. there is a plugin for photoshop called HLVG (hasta la vista green) that does a good job of removing green

Thanks Scott. I tried it but it doesn't change much, it just turns it into blue.

What I've done is: I calibrated, debayered and stacked the light frames. after that I extracted the red channel and processed it a bit to get some faint details out. After that I copied it to the red channel in the RGB stack but the color balance is way off.

 

Edited January 19, 2018 by emyliano2000

[Pompey Monkey 792]

Great inspirational story!

The skills that you learn working from a light polluted site will make processing data from a dark site a pure joy. ?

[Pete Presland 11,373]

Lovely of you to share your journey with everyone. Very interesting to see your images improve from the 1st image from a couple of years back. The final image is superb. Beautifully framed and processed, definitely one to be proud of well done!

[ollypenrice 29,140]

Great post! We talk about all sorts of things but not often enough about why we do it. And, in the end, why we do it is the key issue!

Olly

[emyliano2000 1,928]

Thank you everybody for the lovely comments.

I hope that sharing my story would inspire other to do the same.

Astronomy and astrophotography are now a part of my life and even though I am still at the beginning of my journey I feel really good that I am finally able to do something that I really like and I'm really passionate about. 

Emil

 

[Big Chris 71]

Perfectly captures the spirit of Astronomy - thank you and well done!

[scienceguy 4]

Nice pics! Those are really amazing!

[Atreta 543]

Very interesting story and great capture. 

Also you did quite an evolution between first and last captures. 

Thank you for sharing with us, astronomy is a life long love, we may set it aside or maybe forget for sometime but it always comes back. 

[emyliano2000 1,928]

31 minutes ago, Atreta said:

astronomy is a life long love, we may set it aside or maybe forget for sometime but it always comes back

It is indeed and this time I'm not letting it go again. And I'm really happy to say that it's here to stay!

[jjosefsen 485]

Very nice to see the journey from mobile phone to modded dslr, and the application of the knowledge gained under the way.

What a difference it makes, the last photo is quite good. Thank you for sharing.

[lynk1973 3]

Nice story Emil, and great image.. You know I love your work.. Keep them coming