M45 and M42 with Skywatcher Evostar 72ED

[Victor Boesen]

Since I received my little Evostar this summer I've been using it as much as I could almost forgetting my 10" dob at times because of my time limitations at the current moment. The little scope has never disappointed and I've both had the joy of observing Saturn and Jupiter while also taking a couple images with it when the weather would allow for it which it really hasn't the entire november almost.

I was excited to try and get my first shot of the nebulosity in the Pleiades and the Running man nebula together with the Orion nebula while still keeping my expectations a little low since I live in a bortle 7-8 area.
I hope you enjoy the final results:

M45: 27X1min 800ISO, Nikon D3300
M42: 60X1min 800ISO, Nikon D3300

Everything mounted on my star adventure mount that I've started to love even more:)

Feedback is of course strongly appreciated!

Clear skies!

Victor

[Ruud]

I think the images are great. That's a lovely little scope you have.

[Victor Boesen]

Just now, Ruud said:

I think the images are great. That's a lovely little scope you have.

Thank you very much! The orion neb image has a nice spot on my PC wallpaper and it'l probably stay there for some time I love the scope! So lightweight, sharp and durable. Only downside is its coma, but I will look into getting a flattener.

[Adreneline]

Those are seriously impressive results especially recognising where you took them from. I cannot imagine imaging on the side of the street with all that light pollution. Well done!

[Victor Boesen]

5 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Those are seriously impressive results especially recognising where you took them from. I cannot imagine imaging on the side of the street with all that light pollution. Well done!

Thank you very much!! Dealing with light pollution is a huge problem for me especially when processing and sometimes gradient can be hard to cope with.

[vineyard]

Wow - lovely photos ESPECIALLY given where you took them from.  👏🏾 May I ask whether you used any filters (and if so which ones)?  Cheers.

[Victor Boesen]

43 minutes ago, vineyard said:

Wow - lovely photos ESPECIALLY given where you took them from.  👏🏾 May I ask whether you used any filters (and if so which ones)?  Cheers.

Thank you very much! I didn't use any filters.

[TareqPhoto]

Well, i will forget about M42, but for M45, i keep shooting it and i could never get any nebulosity or dust from it, so i don't know what is wrong, i live in Bortle 8-9, but the sky at night late is really very nice and clear and less LP as i can see, but something wrong that prevent me from getting any nebolusity of Pleiades, even with stacking, but maybe because my exposures are short between 30sec and 1min subs, but i will never give up, if some managed to get that under bad LP sometimes then i think i can do something about it also one day

[Victor Boesen]

17 hours ago, TareqPhoto said:

Well, i will forget about M42, but for M45, i keep shooting it and i could never get any nebulosity or dust from it, so i don't know what is wrong, i live in Bortle 8-9, but the sky at night late is really very nice and clear and less LP as i can see, but something wrong that prevent me from getting any nebolusity of Pleiades, even with stacking, but maybe because my exposures are short between 30sec and 1min subs, but i will never give up, if some managed to get that under bad LP sometimes then i think i can do something about it also one day

Keep doing so!! It required a little bit of stretching and fiddling in post-processing, but I'm sure you'll get it! What's your total integration time?? How many subs?

[carastro]

Crikey:

Quote

I cannot imagine imaging on the side of the street

Full stop.  

I'd be worried about vandals and cars and thieves.

But kudos to you and your efforts which are certainly coming on.

Carole 

 

[TareqPhoto]

9 minutes ago, Victor Boesen said:

Keep doing so!! It required a little bit of stretching and fiddling in post-processing, but I'm sure you'll get it! What's your total integration time?? How many subs?

I can't remember now, but mostly i try to have something like 10-20 frames, maybe i tried once for 40 frames of those short exposures, but i will consider that as failed experiments maybe and i will start over or try again with longer exposure a bit that is allowed and more subs, so like how much total integration time is sufficient under this Bortle sky?

[Victor Boesen]

Just now, carastro said:

Crikey:

Full stop.  

I'd be worried about vandals and cars and thieves.

But kudos to you and your efforts which are certainly coming on.

Carole 

 

Thank you very much! And yes, I live in the middle of Denmark's largest city so when I'm out imaging I always stay outside with my kit the entire time which means I'm sometimes limited by the temperatures outside;)

[Victor Boesen]

4 minutes ago, TareqPhoto said:

I can't remember now, but mostly i try to have something like 10-20 frames, maybe i tried once for 40 frames of those short exposures, but i will consider that as failed experiments maybe and i will start over or try again with longer exposure a bit that is allowed and more subs, so like how much total integration time is sufficient under this Bortle sky?

The total integration time on the Pleiades image is 27 minutes but next time I'll be imaging M45 again I'll probably try to get around 1 hour.

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, TareqPhoto said:

I can't remember now, but mostly i try to have something like 10-20 frames, maybe i tried once for 40 frames of those short exposures, but i will consider that as failed experiments maybe and i will start over or try again with longer exposure a bit that is allowed and more subs, so like how much total integration time is sufficient under this Bortle sky?

To get decent amount of nebulosity around M45 you need to expose for at least couple of hours total, so 20-40 30s to one minute subs is just not going to be enough.

Second important thing is processing of course, you need to gain more skill in processing in order to be able to render faint nebulosity properly.

For example, I'm certain that first image in the thread - that of M45 can reveal much more nebulosity then it now has. Quick manipulation of attached JPEG gets this:

As you can see there is nebulosity there even after converting to 8bit and jpeg. I'm sure that in 32bit format it can be rendered much better.

[xtreemchaos]

very good results mate, well done. it just gos to show what nice pics you can get from built up bright areas. charl.

[carastro]

I did a bit of processing on your M45.  Some Nebulosity there as Vlaiv says.  Longer subs would be better but you would need to be guiding with the SA.

 

[StuartJPP]

Nice to see the results under these bad conditions, well done.

Like vlaiv did (and Carole, just as I was about to press "Submit Reply"), I had a bit of a play with the M45 JPG above and found there's much more hidden in there than originally exposed. Processing the JPG file is not ideal of course as much faint detail is already lost.

This is a bit of tweaking in PI and PS.

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by StuartJPP
"Reply", not "Replay".

[carastro]

Also I have done some stretching with M42.

The bright centre is always a problem, but luckily you have not stretched it too much so i managed to cope with it.

Carole 

 

[Debo]

Good results Victor.

I hope you don't mind but couldn't resist having a tweek of your images in PS  

 

[Chris]

Nice shot's. Skywacther LP filters work well for very little outlay I've found. It might make post processing a little easier.

[Victor Boesen]

Wow nice results guys! Will give a go at processing again to see if I can stretch out a little more nebulosity:)

[vlaiv]

19 minutes ago, Victor Boesen said:

Wow nice results guys! Will give a go at processing again to see if I can stretch out a little more nebulosity:)

I'm sure that you can pull it out a bit better and also - flat correction will not hurt the image either

 

[Victor Boesen]

2 hours ago, vlaiv said:

I'm sure that you can pull it out a bit better and also - flat correction will not hurt the image either

 

I'm completely aware haha, I think I'll start taking flats again

[TareqPhoto]

Well, i think because of LP maybe i need to go longer, because i shoot mono, and i don't see any nebulosity with any filter of LRGB, and i did see amazing result with L filter alone, so i think maybe maybe i have to try again for longer exposures and more subs, not sure if for example 2 hours with let's say 60sec or 120sec can do the job, in fact i want to try with one filter only either L or blue to see if i can manage to get nebulosity, and i do use PixInsight and i stretch, but i feel i still didn't get anything there, but i will give my old data another try or i try to have new data.

M42 is easy in my area even with LP, sure the dynamic range is tricky, but i already know about that, multiple exposures and it is done, but i feel confused why i am able to capture a nebula emission or not better or easier than clusters such as this Pleiades? in fact even in some top quality images i can see lots of dust in the region, even that i couldn't get while i did get dust in Orion, but to be honest my tests for Pleiades were all old, i think last year and beginning of this year and i stopped DSO, now i have better idea about how to image and adding guiding soon and also PI more practice i may yield better results of Pleiades, in fact i still try to find from anywhere someone did M45 with mono camera under Bortle 9 sky, not Bortle 6 or 7 which is still good enough than 8 and 9.

[cuivenion]

Wow, I thought I had it bad with security lights and all. Kudos on the dedication. Nice images.

Edited December 9, 2019 by cuivenion