M42 Quickie

[LightningNZ]

Great Orion Nebula (M42) quickie. First new astro image for me since March 2015! 34x 30 second subs. 6" F/5 Newtonian with GSO coma corrector and Nikon D5100 at ISO 200. Unguided on HEQ5-Pro. No calibration images were used. Just a quick stack in DSS and processing in Adobe Photoshop CS5.
Cheers,
Cam

[jenchris]

I love the softness of it.
Like a reflection in a lake

[BruceG]

Welcome back Cam, that's a lovely portrait of old M42. You have balanced the bright core very smoothly with the dimmer dust clouds. Glad to see you imaging again.
Bruce.

[Somnium]

wow, really great stuff Cam. love the dynamic range you have managed to bring out

[LightningNZ]

Thanks guys. It's been a long wait, but I'm heading out again tonight. Wish me luck :)

[LightningNZ]

Added 9x 2-1/2 minute subs. Didn't seem to track as well as I expected. I'm really not happy with my mounting. :shrug:

[raymo]

Nice one Cam, that magenta[ish] sky background gives it more of an artistic look compared with the traditional blue/black .
raymo

[LightningNZ]

Thanks Raymo. I was trying to make the nebula come across a bit warmer looking but I've probably botched the colour balance. The background is a bit too colourful - the edges of this are very noisy because they are only covered by a couple of subs each.

[chardie]

nice images. thumbs up for the effort you have put in. i do like the first a tad more than the second. the second seems a little vivid perhaps not that i know much about stars i would have been happy with the first lol