February 7, 2018: My best M45 by far

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Got guiding working better on the EQ3-2, and tried up to 120s (as opposed to 30 s yesterday) with the APM 80mm F/6 triplet, TRF-2008 0.8x reducer, and Canon EOS 550D (modded) with Astronomik CLS-CCD filter. A total exposure time of 3 h 48 min reported in APP which I used for almost all processing. Just used Gimp for some final tweaks and a bit of cropping. Might do a restack with slightly different setting (there are what appear to be two short satellite trails in the background). The background is a bit noisy, so I might try to filter that a bit, but overall, this is the best I have done on M45 ever (at my first go with the 80mm). Well pleased.

[iansmith]

I think you have a nice image there. I wouldn't push the background back too far as you don't want to loose the detail of the fainter nebulosity surrounding the stars.

Cheers, Ian

[wimvb]

And a really nice image it is. Lovely detail in the nebula.

That one satellite seems to be blinking. Could it be Musks Tesla? 

 

[xtreemchaos]

loads of neb there Michael. well done. charl.

[gorann]

Very very nice indeed!

I do not find it too noisy but you may of course play with NR to see how far you can go without loosing nebulosity. Personally I would probably increase the blue/cyan saturation a tad, but that is just me - I am a colour addict.

Cheers

[Craney]

Great shot.  

Taking a picture of M45 really got me into AP, I was just bowled over by what an imaging rig could tease out of this cluster.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Thanks everyone! The laptop is restacking the lot, but this time with sigma clipping. I might try some anisotropic diffusion filtering later.

[MarsG76]

Very nice... looking on the phone screen it look perfect... sooo much nebulosity!!!