First Deep Sky M42

[ZiHao]

Taken with SW150//750, EQ3 pro, unmodded D5300, APT

Guiding with PHD2, Stacked and Processed in DSS, Pixinsight

60 x 40s, 40 minutes of data + 20 darks and bias frames.

Guiding was pretty bad on that night, declination error was good ( around 0.4" ), right ascension was around 2.3", therefore there is some visible star trails in the image. Every 5 minutes the declination will completely throw off to about 9", I have to stop everything and guide again, which is really annoying, I believe this is my mount's problem because I am pushing the weight limit of my EQ3 pro to about 6.5kg lol. Will try to play around the PHD2 settings next time out to improve the values. Advices are greatly apppreciated. If you want to give my stacked image a try, I will email the TIFF file to you.

 

[MarsG76]

Great result

 

[MikeODay]

Very nice.

[Demonperformer]

For a first DSO shot that is excellent.

[Seanelly]

Beauty.

[ZiHao]

Reprocessed image.

If I were to remove the orangish glow on both sides of the image, it would reduce the small bit of faint nebulosity on the dimmest part of the nebula in the image, so I chose not to, and eventually satisfied with the final product .

[MartinFransson]

That first version is really good for a first image! The second version is pushed a bit too hard, you need more exposure to do that I think

If you use layers in Photoshop or masks in PI you can stretch hard without blowing out the brighter areas. 

[Jarvo]

Both are really good. Second one shows how much data is hidden beneath the surface. 

Nice work