Orion and Running Man nebulae - RGB + iR

[alexbb]

I believe I didn't post this earlier when I shot it. I managed to reprocess it these days from scratch, I only reused the stacks.

In September I was shooting the last panels on Andromeda with the 130PDS for higher resolution and SNR. Luckily, late in the night or early in the morning, Orion was already rising so I pointed the scope towards it too.

Over a few nights, I managed to record about 1:20h of each RGB, half an hour of iR and 1:30h of luminance through the LP filter. At that time I thought I had plenty of time left to continue during late autumn or winter and I switched to other targets and another scope. It turns out I won't be able to get more data this season with the small newton as I try to make a mosaic in that area with the refractor at a shorter FL. So I'm left with only about 6h worth of data for now.

For the core I used 20s long exposures, I have shorter too, but compressing so much all the dynamic range it's not for my taste, I wanted to keep the core obviously brighter.

The R channel is made of R + iR, the luminance is made of real luminance through the IDAS LP filter + a small ratio of iR and synthetic luminance extracted from RGB.

I should have payed more attention for controlling the artifacts resulted after the MLT sharpening, but I should start over and apply some deconvolution too.

The equipment used was the SW 130 PDS, ZWO RGB, IDAS-P2 and Baader iR 685nm pass filters, ASI1600MMC, OAG, all driven by the EQ6-R.

On astrobin you can find maybe other details and watch it in full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/385168/

Clear skies!

Alex

More colour

[Guest]

Extremely delicate processing here, really enjoy looking at this.

The region between the main bit and the running human are particularly interesting as I can't remember seeing them in such fine detail/colour.

Very good!

David

[RolandKol]

Amazing shot!  and only 6h!  
I am already 2 years in AP, and have not managed to get at least one clear night for it!!!

if it is clear, - the moon, the roof, the tree -  I need to move out to LaPalma!

[alexbb]

David, Roland, thank you very much!

57 minutes ago, RolandKol said:

Amazing shot!  and only 6h!

A greater aperture helps a lot. Compared to an 80mm refractor, the 130mm mirror gathers more than 2.5 times the amount of light. Even if some light is obstructed and not all is reflected, the scope still sends to the camera more than twice as much as the 80mm refractor. Of course, I wanted a few more hours, but the data was decent enough to worth processing it. As the weather looks lately, I'm afraid I won't be able to get more newton data this season.