So I finally got all those pesky rings and reducers needed to get everything bolted and nailed together on the 72ED, plus Sydney's skies also got clear for a few nights last week hence I was able to put together a few hours on M42. My guiding was mostly on strike so at the end I scrambled together 13x120s and 14x180s of lights with CLS filter, 8x180 lights through Ha filter and some 10x180 of darks.
Here is the result - my very first light well - ever, as my trials with the old trusty Canon were soo atrociously bad even I couldn't bear to look at them.
The first one is pretty much default settings out of Astro Pixel Processor the second one with some playing around with some settings and very little bit of love in Affinity Photo. As you see I have a long way to go - can't get the core to show without destroying surrounding nebulosity and vice versa.
Any advice or criticism is welcome.
Hey Bohdan, must say for your very first attempt you have done yourself proud, excellent effort indeed.
Admittedly the colour is a little different, but a good start IMHO.
Thank you Leon for kind words. Yeah - I read that APP tend to do a bit different - maybe duller - colors than PI everyone is used to and I'm trying not to over-process things in Affinity Photo - mostly because I am too new to it and though similar to Photoshop it's also very different so just finding my legs.
A great first effort.
Regarding the core, M42's core is exceedingly bright and HDR techniques are virtually mandatory for retaining the core detail without compromising on the surrounding nebulosity. It is possible (depending on your camera, settings and telescope) that 120s and 180s lights are going to have clipped the data in the brightest part of the core. The solution to this is to shoot shorter light frames to retain the core as well, and then blend later.
You should find that lights between 15 and 30s will retain the core details although in APP you will need to back the stretch off significantly to actually see them. Then in Photoshop just blend the core in with an image stretched for the surrounding nebulosity, and done.
Thanks Craig - it also dawned on me that as everyone goes for the M42 as the first try it is not the easiest one to actually process as you nicely outlined. I'll give it a go with shorter subs and will see if I'll be able to improve on the core/nebulosity ratio. But I really need to improve on my guiding skills first and possibly get some flattener even though the ASI533MC got a smallish sensor stars still go wonky in the corners.
This is an excellent first light. Great amount of detail. As Craig noted some shorter subs are pretty well essential to be able to recover the highlights though the ASI533 does have excellent dynamic range. Maybe try some zero gain as well as unity (100 gain) ...assume these were with unity gain?
Thanks - well, I am using ASIAIR Pro and there I can only set the gain. First subs I tried were with gain 50 and the core was even more burnt out so this set was done with gain zero. obviously my subs were too long which I haven't realised at the time and kept them at 120 and 180 seconds. I need to do another set of subs with hmmm - 20s and 60s - and I'll see if I can got it all merged in the Affinity.
