M42

[Rodd]

My first ever complete image of M42.  I would have rather portrayed a nice, brownish dusty background, but my sky makes subtle imaging quite difficult.  So I settled for Ha.  This is a HDR composition, with .5sec and 30 sec subs in the RGB channels, and 5 sec and 300sec subs in the Ha channel.  I used a synthetic luminance comprised of all RGB subs.  I tried shooting real luminance, but 30 sec subs blew out the sensor (the target is low and in a bright part of the sky).  was pleasantly surprised  that the results were not disastrous, as  for me this target often results in  images that require considerable reworking and reshooting.  The processing was actually the simplest part of this image.  Data management was probably the biggest challenge.  Far from my goal, but acceptable, I suppose., if you can abide by pink.

FSQ 106 with .6x reducer and ASI 1600.  

Red: 215 30 sec and 500 0.5 sec-HDR stack

Green: 156 30 sec and 500 0.5 sec-HDR Stack

Blue: 196 30 sec and 500 0.5 sec-HDR stack

SynthLum:  All RGB HDR stacks

Ha: 42 300 sec and 277 5 sec

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Rodd

[Sunshine]

Looks great!

[Rodd]

10 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Looks great!

Thanks

[fwm891]

Great stuff Rodd

[Rodd]

1 hour ago, fwm891 said:

Great stuff Rodd

Thsnks

[AstroMuni]

On 23/12/2022 at 01:34, Rodd said:

I would have rather portrayed a nice, brownish dusty background,

Looks lovely 😍 You could still try and extract the brownish dusty clouds from your image, as I can see that its there in background. I used the GHT feature in Siril to do this.

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by AstroMuni

[simmo39]

Always good to see M42 and this is a fine image of that target.

[Rodd]

16 minutes ago, simmo39 said:

Always good to see M42 and this is a fine image of that target.

Thanks Simmo 

[Rodd]

2 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Looks lovely 😍 You could still try and extract it from your image, as I can see that its there in background. I used the GHT feature in Siril to do this.

 

I probably will just go with RGB and inset the Ha only in the nebula. I might try collecting luminance 

[AstroMuni]

10 minutes ago, Rodd said:

I probably will just go with RGB and inset the Ha only in the nebula. I might try collecting luminance 

Look forward to seeing final version. Good luck

[Rodd]

Here's a bit less Ha, less saturated

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Rodd

[Paul M]

That's really nice. M42 is  timeless classic that can be contorted beyond recognition by modern processing tools, "overcooked" even.

Aesthetically, you did it proud!

[Franklin]

What a capture!

2 hours ago, Rodd said:

Here's a bit less Ha, less saturated

I like the composition in your image. Rather than a close up of "The Great Nebula" in Orion, you've captured the surrounding area and it's amazing. Just look at all those baby stars floating around and all born from that cloud of gas and dust, Wow! 

[Rodd]

2 hours ago, Paul M said:

That's really nice. M42 is  timeless classic that can be contorted beyond recognition by modern processing tools, "overcooked" even.

Aesthetically, you did it proud!

Thanks Paul. 

[Rodd]

1 hour ago, Franklin said:

What a capture!

I like the composition in your image. Rather than a close up of "The Great Nebula" in Orion, you've captured the surrounding area and it's amazing. Just look at all those baby stars floating around and all born from that cloud of gas and dust, Wow! 

Thanks Franklin

[alpal]

On 23/12/2022 at 23:01, AstroMuni said:

Looks lovely 😍 You could still try and extract it from your image, as I can see that its there in background. I used the GHT feature in Siril to do this.

 

 

Well done,

I didn't know about  Siril.

It must be worth downloading?

https://siril.org/

 

cheers

Allan

Edited December 24, 2022 by alpal

[AstroMuni]

On 24/12/2022 at 12:04, alpal said:

It must be worth downloading?

I would definitely recommend it. Its not the all singing all dancing package like PixInsight, but its under active development and with regular contributions from developers is getting better with every release.