M42 Widefield on Christmas eve

[mackiedlm]

Christmas eve brought my first clear night in almost a month so, despite the family's protestations I was out trying out a new (to me but manufactured mid 70's) 200mm lens (€25 off e-bay so why not!)

I'm really pleased with the lens though more time on target and less rejects for satellite and other trails would have helped.

Anyway,

20X5s 30X60s 40X90s all ISO800
Canon 1100D (un modded)
Super Takumar 200mm f/4 vintage lens (stopped down to 5.6 with rings)
Staradventurer mount

Comments or suggestions for improvement? (I know about the dust bunny right of top centre - it landed on the lens between imaging and flats the next morning - tried to take it out in Photoshop but it was making it worse!)

As I say, lots of rejects for satellites but this one was particularly galling;

🤣

Happy new year to you all!

[Victor Boesen]

Very nice image! I even think some IFN is visible in there;)

[mackiedlm]

1 hour ago, Victor Boesen said:

Very nice image! I even think some IFN is visible in there;)

I think you are right. It was more obvious at some steps in the processing and I think I may have ago with Scort Rosens LLRGB and see if I can pull it out.

[Paul M]

That is a pleasant image, unusual but pleasant!

I do like wide field too.

[Whistlin Bob]

I really like that- in particular that you've managed not to blow out the brighter parts too much- presumably with the different exposure lengths. I also really like the star colours.

It's good fun this vintage lens business- I've been using an f4 Jupiter 135 and an f4.5 Tair 300 this year and really pleased with both- total spend £65 (so long as you ignore the filters, mount, camera, software etc etc!!!). They don't stand up to pixel peeping, but that doesn't bother me. Looking at this I'm wondering if I 'need' a 200 as well!

2 thoughts I did have:

- Are you sigma clipping when you stack? If so, that should sort out any pixels affected by satellite and aircraft trails without needing to reject whole frames. Though obvs keep the Santa one 😁

- There's a lot of hydrogen alpha in this area- if you have the option to get your camera modded I think you'll pick up quite a bit of red cloud around M42 in this area.

Edited December 28, 2019 by Whistlin Bob
Unclear

[mackiedlm]

10 minutes ago, Whistlin Bob said:

I really like that- in particular that you've managed not to blow out the brighter parts too much- presumably with the different exposure lengths. I also really like the star colours.

It's good fun this vintage lens business- I've been using an f4 Jupiter 135 and an f4.5 Tair 300 this year and really pleased with both- total spend £65 (so long as you ignore the filters, mount, camera, software etc etc!!!). They don't stand up to pixel peeping, but that doesn't bother me. Looking at this I'm wondering if I 'need' a 200 as well!

2 thoughts I did have:

- Are you sigma clipping when you stack? If so, that should sort out any pixels affected by satellite and aircraft trails without needing to reject whole frames. Though obvs keep the Santa one 😁

- There's a lot of hydrogen alpha in this area- if you have the option to get your camera modded I think you'll pick up quite a bit of red cloud around M42 in this area.

Thanks for that Bob. 

Yes I'm really delighted with this one. I have a 135mm pentacon which is good though a bit of CA which can be a pain and a 50mm f1.8 Petacon which is really good.

I use Astro Pixel Processor for my stacking and it has a sigma clip option which I use most of the time. As it was first light with this lens and the individual frames were looking quite good I opted to be brutal on rejections this time, really wanted to give the lens it's best shot.

I actually have a second EOS 1100D which is Ha modded.  And I'm thinking to get more frames of this image with that and also my Ha filter and see what we can get from that.

 Thanks again

David