Horsehead and M42 in Ha at 50mm

[Jannis]

After being sick for what feels like an eternity, followed by two weeks of clouds and wind, i simply could not just let this night go as it was said to be yet another week or two with clouds on the way.

With my main scope not quite ready for use yet, i quickly hooked up the QHY5L-II-M to a canon 50mm lens, attached a 7nm Ha filter, and started looking for a decent target. I didn't need to look long before i saw Orion, and then it was set!
As the moon is currently 78% lit i must admit i was a bit worried, but i think the end result turned out OK, especially considering the relatively little data of just about 1 hour.

Exposure is 13x 300s (and 35x 30s for the core of M42) with the QHY5L-II at gain 12.
The lens is a Canon 50mm F/1.4@F/2.8
Darks applied to 300s exposures, but no flats or offset. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and cropped to 16*9 size.

 

[ollypenrice]

A classic composition.

Personally I'd prefer more noise and less NR in the processing but that's always a personal call.

Olly

[Jannis]

Thank you for the feedback Olly!

I have started to also prefer a bit of noise instead of washed out details. I compared the before and after, and i didn't see much lost details compared to before NR though, so maybe i did a mistake somewhere during processing. I will try a reprocess and see if i can make it better.
It might also be that 2x drizzle stacking with only 13 low res frames was a bit optimistic, so i will try again with no drizzle and see how it compares. I will also try to be more gentle with the NR next time.

[swag72]

Oooooo..... I like this!! Are you planning on adding to it for the rest of the season?

[Jannis]

Thanks! :) 

I plan to add more data to it when able, but adding data to it for the rest of the season probably won't be an option. I'm also not sure how well it would work to add "moonless" data to an image like this where the moon was right over the target and lit up quite bright?

[tomato]

Very nice, I love the framing.

[swag72]

53 minutes ago, Jannis said:

Thanks!

I plan to add more data to it when able, but adding data to it for the rest of the season probably won't be an option. I'm also not sure how well it would work to add "moonless" data to an image like this where the moon was right over the target and lit up quite bright?

No problem... just stack it all and that's that! You may find you get benefits from not using the data with the moon light, but that's a choice that can be made by stacking ALL data, then stacking the data without the moon in and seeing what's better