M42 in lieu of the conjunction it's nice!

[Nikolas]

M42 Orion's Nebula a well known target but always a difficult one as it's extremely bright in the core. Zwo 294mc optolong L-Extreme, ZWO asiar pro ZWO eaf used for the first time

Combined 30 second and 600 second exposures (1 hour each) together along with the HOO pallette in Astropixel processor, in essence it took 4 process steps before combining the colour together. All this from a one shot colour camera and the L-Extreme.





No conjunction as the neighbours house is in the way and last night it was raining

[TrevorW]

Nice image Nikolas ;) touch heavy on the green stars there is a plugin for PS called Hasta La Vista Green see attached where I applied to your image just fixed up the starts a bit in my opinion, hope you don't mind :D

[Nikolas]

Cheers Trevor unfortunately HLV Green is not mac compatible which is very annoying
Edit: I used the camera Raw plugin and used the lens correction tab to get rid of that green star cast.
thanks for the tip I didn't even notice after hours of processing.

[TrevorW]

:welcome::thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Nice result Nic. Looks like a pink/red rose :love: :thumbsup:

Perhaps you could blend the inner area a bit better though, as the transition looks a little obvious and the trap area has lost its colour and looks a bit monochrome..?

Still, a great job :thumbsup:

Mike

[Kuz]

Lost for words nik . I can't wait for my xtreme lens to roll up . Love the colours

[Nikolas]

Thanks Mike it's been a struggle to get the blend right I'm still working on it the colour was blue but I may have leached it out too much will keep working on it cheers

[strongmanmike]

Its a surprisingly diffucult area to process actually, seems easy but very few images of M42 really nail it IMO. The trick is to use multiple layers of short exposures and very careful graduated blending :thumbsup:

Mike

[Startrek]

This is my first image of M42 using my new ZWOASI2600MC and ZWO Duoband filter under Sydney Bortle 8 skies and a 25% waxing moon
6” f6 newt
15 x 180 sec subs
No darks
No flats
Camera was set to Highest Dynamic Range in Ascom driver
No layering with short and long subs were needed
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools V1.6

Core definitely not blown out

The last 3 years using my Canon 600D DSLR on M42 , the core was washed out after only 40 or 50 sec subs so had to use layering and other techniques to expose the core

This new ZWOASI2600MC OSC camera is a joy to use with incredible performance

[strongmanmike]

Yeah pretty good Marty :thumbsup: using short exposures with a camera that handles dynamic range well (eg. good well depth etc), narrow views like this are (clearly) quite possible....of course when you try to present the whole of this grand nebula and reveal the full dynamic range of the outer surrounding faint bits, as well as the details within bright centre, while keeping it all looking natural.... it is probably more difficult than many imagine :thumbsup:

Mike

[Startrek]

Thanks Mike
Here’s the wide view
I only showed you the crop view to get a better view of the core
Cheers
Martin

[Nikolas]

I might try gain zero to get the highest dynamic range and see how that turns out, I'm pretty sure it's more the processing of the different exposures that made the blend a little stark.

[Nikolas]

Ok I played around with some Photoshop layers and think I transitioned this blend a little better, not perfect but not as stark as the original thoughts?

[Geoff45]

Really nice framing Nik. Having M42 upright gives a whole new perspective on it. As Mike said, it looks like a rose.

[Nikolas]

Thanks Geoff it does have that rose like look to it, cheers.