Imaging horsehead and flame nebula

[TiffsAndAstro]

I was hoping to get some advice on imaging this target. Considering it must be a popular target and how staggering it looks there are few good videos on YouTube.

My plan is once it's above 45 (?) degrees I'll image in broadband when little moon about and Ha/Oiii rest of time, minimum 4 hours each, hopefully much longer.

Also Sii if there is much about? And If get that filter

Looking at my witches broom, maybe even alnitak won't be a problem in narrowband.

My framing with current default camera rotation looks great in telescopius.

What major problems am I not aware of?

[Elp]

Alnitak.

[ONIKKINEN]

Alnilam and Mintaka, although out of field, can cause flares or internal reflections with some scopes and correctors because they are so bright. Not much you can do about that and you'll just have to see how it goes.

[TiffsAndAstro]

6 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Alnilam and Mintaka, although out of field, can cause flares or internal reflections with some scopes and correctors because they are so bright. Not much you can do about that and you'll just have to see how it goes.

Yeah i can't really ask them to move. Besides it looks almost required now, I've seen them in so many pics.

Just have to give it go and see, like you say.

There is a reflection nebula to the left of HH and down a bit. I assume that will appear in my broadband but not in my narrowband?

Edited September 13 by TiffsAndAstro

[WolfieGlos]

46 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

Yeah i can't really ask them to move. Besides it looks almost required now, I've seen them in so many pics.

Just have to give it go and see, like you say.

There is a reflection nebula to the left of HH and down a bit. I assume that will appear in my broadband but not in my narrowband?

Depends how narrow your filter is. The l'enhance brings it through, but I'm unsure if the l'extreme would.

The Askar C2 Ha/OIII filter that I have brought it through in a 2 hour test session earlier this year. It's not going to win any awards, but here it is;

 

I also captured this area in RGB and Ha the other year with the 72ED. 12 hours if I recall. It's well worth it. The flame looks much better in RGB colour if you ask me.

But yes.......

1 hour ago, Elp said:

Alnitak.

....that's it! 

Edited September 13 by WolfieGlos

[TiffsAndAstro]

1 hour ago, WolfieGlos said:

Depends how narrow your filter is. The l'enhance brings it through, but I'm unsure if the l'extreme would.

The Askar C2 Ha/OIII filter that I have brought it through in a 2 hour test session earlier this year. It's not going to win any awards, but here it is;

 

I also captured this area in RGB and Ha the other year with the 72ED. 12 hours if I recall. It's well worth it. The flame looks much better in RGB colour if you ask me.

But yes.......

....that's it! 

Yeah broadband no moon is priority, hopefully Ha as luminance. Oiii, possibly Sii? Who knows lol

Yellow orange flame nebula looks good, but there are options. I saw an amazing sho on astrobin. 

I think that's a great photo. It's an area that seems to suit wide range of fov and processing.

you got the reflection nebula via narrow band?

 

Edited September 13 by TiffsAndAstro

[WolfieGlos]

1 hour ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

you got the reflection nebula via narrow band?

Yeah, it must come through on the OIII line. Same with M42, I've imaged that with the l'enhance and the Running Man came through nicely. 

I didn't process that image as a HOO though, just as the "RGB" stack that Siril pumped out.

I don't know about SII in the Horsey though, although I'm not a fan of this one in other palettes.

[Fegato]

I like the horsehead and flame area captured in broadband, firstly for the colours (particularly the flame, as WolfieGlos says, which otherwise comes out a dark orange sort of colour), and also for all the dust and reflection areas that can be captured. However, I know that I'm spoiled with Bortle 3 skies, so that may not be the best approach for all. I've not tried mono - no idea if there's any S2 there I'm afraid.

re: Alnitak - i just let it rip and hope for the best. In broadband it's very prominent, but I don't get any nasty artifacts. It's there, it's big - I quite like it shining boldly!

I think this area only gets to about 36 degrees altitude here, so if you are  oooooop nooorth, it will obviously be a bit lower. I tend to shorten my exposures a bit when shooting low in the south (I get a little more light pollution there too).

My effort here is stretched hard for all the dust. Perhaps a bit too bright, and the HII a bit too pink. It was cut from a huge Orion's belt mosaic...  I might have a go at this framing again with that data to see if I can improve the colours a bit.

[900SL]

Great target. Lots of signal and you are lucky to have it that high. Benefits from wide field, which reduces Altinak somewhat. RGB for colour and reflection nebulosity. Ha is quite something on the wall of red. Not tried Oiii yet

 

Edit: This was less than 1 hr Ha taken low altitude last year when testing the Edge 4.5 Ha filter

Edited September 14 by 900SL

[TiffsAndAstro]

45 minutes ago, Fegato said:

I like the horsehead and flame area captured in broadband, firstly for the colours (particularly the flame, as WolfieGlos says, which otherwise comes out a dark orange sort of colour), and also for all the dust and reflection areas that can be captured. However, I know that I'm spoiled with Bortle 3 skies, so that may not be the best approach for all. I've not tried mono - no idea if there's any S2 there I'm afraid.

re: Alnitak - i just let it rip and hope for the best. In broadband it's very prominent, but I don't get any nasty artifacts. It's there, it's big - I quite like it shining boldly!

I think this area only gets to about 36 degrees altitude here, so if you are  oooooop nooorth, it will obviously be a bit lower. I tend to shorten my exposures a bit when shooting low in the south (I get a little more light pollution there too).

My effort here is stretched hard for all the dust. Perhaps a bit too bright, and the HII a bit too pink. It was cut from a huge Orion's belt mosaic...  I might have a go at this framing again with that data to see if I can improve the colours a bit.

This is a great picture, Ty. I'll be a little more cropped in.

If I could get 10% of this image I'd be very very happy.

I can definitely image it in January in west (it was up for a few hours) but may also get it in west early morning in a month or so.

[TiffsAndAstro]

14 minutes ago, 900SL said:

Great target. Lots of signal and you are lucky to have it that high. Benefits from wide field, which reduces Altinak somewhat. RGB for colour and reflection nebulosity. Ha is quite something on the wall of red. Not tried Oiii yet

 

Edit: This was less than 1 hr Ha taken low altitude last year when testing the Edge 4.5 Ha filter

That's a great image too. Do you have rgb to try this as luminance? Also similar fov to what I will have

It won't be above 36 degrees for me, but that should be ok as I imaged it (badly) back in January so can deffo see it for a few hours.

[Elp]

1 hour ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

I can definitely image it in January

Lol, still haven't finished mine from Jan 2022.

[WolfieGlos]

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

Great target. Lots of signal and you are lucky to have it that high. Benefits from wide field, which reduces Altinak somewhat. RGB for colour and reflection nebulosity. Ha is quite something on the wall of red. Not tried Oiii yet

 

Edit: This was less than 1 hr Ha taken low altitude last year when testing the Edge 4.5 Ha filter

I’ve said it elsewhere 900SL….please stop teasing these mono images! 🤣

That’s so clean and so much signal for only an hour, really impressive 👍

[Elp]

Mono and HA are a match made in literal heaven.

[Stu Wilson]

You need to figure out exposure times and then serious processing techniques to bring the best out in this subject.

 

[Stu Wilson]

That's nowhere near my best btw just the only 1 could find on phone.

[TiffsAndAstro]

1 minute ago, Stu Wilson said:

You need to figure out exposure times and then serious processing techniques to bring the best out in this subject.

 

Yeah good advice. I'm planning on 120 seconds, but will see how that goes. Once I have decent data, I can at least give processing it a go.

Been playing with pixel math HOO. Needs a lot of experimenting I think.

[TiffsAndAstro]

2 minutes ago, Stu Wilson said:

That's nowhere near my best btw just the only 1 could find on phone.

It's still very nice

[PhilB61]

This was my primary target at the start of the year and the first that I imaged for more than a couple of hours. In total I gathered about 12 hours of broadband data. I ended up discarding about 4hr of that though as clear nights seemed to coincide with a high or bright moon and the gradients it introduced I felt deteriorated the image. Processing was done on my laptop whilst still travelling and I feel it could really benefit from redoing, in particular dealing with Alnitak better. 

I did some intermediate processing and could really see the benefits in both detail and noise reduction as I added more hours, I would suggest 8 hours as a minimum, and as they say the more the better.

 

 

 

[TiffsAndAstro]

25 minutes ago, PhilB61 said:

This was my primary target at the start of the year and the first that I imaged for more than a couple of hours. In total I gathered about 12 hours of broadband data. I ended up discarding about 4hr of that though as clear nights seemed to coincide with a high or bright moon and the gradients it introduced I felt deteriorated the image. Processing was done on my laptop whilst still travelling and I feel it could really benefit from redoing, in particular dealing with Alnitak better. 

I did some intermediate processing and could really see the benefits in both detail and noise reduction as I added more hours, I would suggest 8 hours as a minimum, and as they say the more the better.

 

 

 

utterly stunning in every way possible.

is this purely RGB? my plan is broadband first, i guess 8 hours  then same with my Ha/Oii filter, possibly only to add Ha as luminence. After seeing this image of yours, maybe ill just stick to rgb.

[PhilB61]

5 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

utterly stunning in every way possible.

is this purely RGB? my plan is broadband first, i guess 8 hours  then same with my Ha/Oii filter, possibly only to add Ha as luminence. After seeing this image of yours, maybe ill just stick to rgb.

Thanks, yes straight out of my OSC camera with just the inbuilt UV/IR filter.  Imaging was done in various rural locations in Spain I would guess Bortle 3 to 4, in higher Bortle locations I think your narrow band filter will be a benefit and will certainly help to tame Alnitak.

[PhilB61]

When I say straight out, I mean without filters, but after all usual processing stages.

[Elp]

Alnitak haloed hard with my Baader HA filter, I had to paint it out.

Low bortle zone makes a massive difference to the detail you can get, especially when doing broadband.

[ollypenrice]

How problematic Alnitak is depends on your optics. Reflectors are very good at not bloating but give gigantic spikes. My Tak 106 FSQ bloated quite badly but the TEC 140 kept it under tight control, easily split as a double in full length exposures with careful stretching. This had no fancy processing or mixed exposure lengths. HaLRGB.

The RASA 8 wasn't quite as confident on Alnitak, which needed more processing and isn't as natural, but this is OSC in F2 optics.*

https://www.astrobin.com/full/eolyxc/0/

I wouldn't hesitate to use some short subs for a high dynamic range blend if your systems finds it necessary.

Olly

[TiffsAndAstro]

55 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

How problematic Alnitak is depends on your optics. Reflectors are very good at not bloating but give gigantic spikes. My Tak 106 FSQ bloated quite badly but the TEC 140 kept it under tight control, easily split as a double in full length exposures with careful stretching. This had no fancy processing or mixed exposure lengths. HaLRGB.

The RASA 8 wasn't quite as confident on Alnitak, which needed more processing and isn't as natural, but this is OSC in F2 optics.*

https://www.astrobin.com/full/eolyxc/0/

I wouldn't hesitate to use some short subs for a high dynamic range blend if your systems finds it necessary.

Olly

all great advice, ty. im not going short exposures at first, but if i get extra clear nights i will. going to do narrowband, then broadband then short exposures all with same target spot. at least then ill have options. as i've only just found out what curves in gimp can do, hdr stuff is still a bit beyond me  

started on a 4 panel of m31 just now as no rotator and m31 is big. 

ps - your image is equally incredibly nice, but also still different  

Edited September 16 by TiffsAndAstro