Welcome Back, Orion

[AdamJL]

Hi all

Orion season is here, be prepared to be spammed for the next few months :lol:

A first start, this is about 90mins of exposure.
There's a lot still to do here. I haven't been able to figure out deconvolution in Pixinsight, and I plan to run the StarExterminator plugin in Photoshop to try and bring out some more detail without touching the stars as there's a little bit of black ringing to the brighter stars.
And in the coming months, I'll add more detail to the core with shorter exposures and try and bring out more hydrogen colour from that region.

Also noticed that there's back-focus issues with this image; will need to add spacers to get those stars at the edges nice and round.

So this is a WIP for now, but I'm happy with the output of 90mins.

Thanks for looking.

Larger image here (https://adamlawler.smugmug.com/Astrophotography/Deep-Sky-Objects/i-PXRTmZ4/A)

edited in PI, finished in Photoshop

[AdamJL]

For comparison, this is the same stack edited in StarTools. Some may prefer this version. I definitely like how StarTools can keep more colour detail in the core, and it's also easier to use deconvolution (starmasks in ST are a bit iffy, though)

Keen to hear your thoughts :)

[Placidus]

So much fine wisp detail.

[AdamJL]

One day I'll take a wider shot of this entire region. There's an awful lot of darker cloud structure hiding in plain sight.

[Nikolas]

PRefer the first image the dust seems more realistic and whispy than the second

[AdamJL]

yeah, agreed, Nik. Thought I'd try both streams. They have their pros and cons, but overall my preference is for the first as well.

[peter_4059]

Have you tried the EZ Processing suite?

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/ez-processing-suite.14937/

[AdamJL]

Yeah, that's the one I couldn't figure out :)
Before/after was no different, no matter how many iterations or settings I changed.

[Bassnut]

Excellent, you've handled the extreme dynamic range very well indeed. And so sharp and detailed.

[AdamJL]

thanks very much, Fred, for your kind comments :)

[Ant0nio]

A great result for 90mins Adam. Looking forward to future updates of the WIP.
FWIW, I like version 1. :)
Cheers,
Tony

[AdamJL]

thanks very much, Tony! And for letting me know your preference.

[pkinchington]

Great neboulosity and have still retained details. Good one!

[AdamJL]

thank you, Peter :)

[Hemi]

Very, very nice Adam

[AdamJL]

Cheers, Hemi!

[graham.hobart]

that is a cracking shot Adam-would love to know the PI routine as I get lost in that programme too but I do think you nailed it in PI-any tips?
Graz

[AdamJL]

Hi Graham. That's really kind, thanks very much!

Still very much a newbie to PI, but this is my flow as it stands. First thing, is to make sure you download the EZ Processing Suite through PI as that really helps and can be a "one touch" solution for many tasks.

Secondly the below is a rough guide for a colour camera. I can't explain which buttons to click on every window because to be honest, PI is really poor at explaining it, and I don't get it myself. When do you click the green tick? When do you drag the triangle over to your image? I've no idea. It's a UI nightmare.
For instance for DynamicCrop I use the green tick because it's there. The other windows don't have it there, so I use the triangle? That's good UI......

Linear workflow:
-A quick unlinked StreenTransferFunction (STF) stretch to see what I'm working with
- DynamicCrop to cut out the nasties
- BackgroundNeutralization (the defaults work well, but feel free to play around)
- Another STF
- ColourCalibration (again, the defaults work well but play around if you want)
- SNR
- EZ Deconvolution. This is where I have run into issues as I can't actually see a difference. But basically you need to create a Star Mask, a PSF image on the Decon tab, and then check for differences with a "practise" run. This is in theory, but I haven't got it working in practise yet.

From there, I do a de-noise through EZ Denoise. Use the Evaluate EZ Denoise Run button to test out different settings before clicking Run EZ Denoise to apply that to your image.

EZ Soft-Stretch to take it non-linear. This is a good stretching plugin!

EZ HDR - defaults work well. Not always required but for M42 it definitely is.

Next, EZ Star Reduction (by now you can tell I like the EZ Suite :))

Then I save it and take it into Photoshop to have a play around with contrast and colours.