M42 in Arkaroola

[wysiwyg]

M42 - Orion Nebula

Location: Arkaroola SA
Date: 20071006
Exposure: 1x10s + 2x90s + 2x240s @ 800ISO
Camera: Nikon D200
Instrument: Celestron SCT 9.25, 6.3 reducer
Guiding: SWED80, Toucam Pro Modded, GuideDog
Processing: Stacked in DeepSkyStacker, In camera dark frame subtraction, Digital Processing in PS-CS2, Sharpening, Curves and colour correction.

Enjoy!

[fringe_dweller]

very very nice Mark, :thumbsup: i bet the stars hurt your eyes out there!

[xelasnave]

Well done you must be very happy with that image.

You got it all and overcome the burn out difficulties.

Thanks for sharing.

Welcome from me to ICEINSPACE hope you can post more of your photos.
Best wishes Mark very well done.

alex

[Alchemy]

cracker of a first post . well done.

[iceman]

Beautiful image Mark, excellent control of all the exposures.

Welcome to IceInSpace!

[wysiwyg]

Thanks Guys I appreciate the warm welcome.:thumbsup:

I have now been dabling in Astrophotography for about 6 months now and started about a year ago getting my interest up in the area with the purchase of a 10" Dob by a friend.

Connected my camera to his scope and took my first image of the moon, from there on end it became an obsession.

I have been an active member of SCP for a while now and decided I needed to broaden my horizons as far as DSO knowledge is concerned.

I hope to discuss some interesting topics with you guys in the future.:)

Mark

[Ric]

Lovely first post Mark and also welcome to IIS.

Cheers

[dugnsuz]

Love it wysiwyg!
Beautiful texture in the nebula.
What have you got the 9.25" mounted on?
Cheers
Doug

[jjjnettie]

Love it.
Welcome to IIS.

[Tamtarn]

Terrific image Mark

Lots of detail right to the core ... Look forward to seeing more from you

[ballaratdragons]

Hi Wizzy :lol:

Good to see you over here too :thumbsup:

[mill]

Looking very good Mark, I might even say excellent or touch down :P

[jase]

Mark, I'm certain there's more valuable data that you could extract from this image. Keep an eye on the histogram as you process the image. Looks like some black clipping as occurred. Look forward to seeing more.

[wysiwyg]

Please explain, as I am only learning about Histograms. Are you taliking about Black point and Whitepoint setting? or something else.:shrug:

[wysiwyg]

Hey Martin,

How are those scope rings?

[wysiwyg]

Thanks Doug, I have it mounted on a SW EQ6 Pro Ver 3.0 using a side by side plate along with the ED80 which I use for autoguiding.

[dugnsuz]

Very nice setup, I'm drooling over those Moonlight focusers and motors!!!!

With regard to Histogram clipping have a look at this tutorial. Although the article is about ImagesPlus - principles are the same
http://www.itchysastro.net/avoiding_histogram_clipping.htm

another one, more PS orientated (scroll down to middle of page)...
http://starizona.com/acb/ccd/software/ps_adj2.aspx

All the best
Doug:thumbsup:

ps...never understood why Celestron persist with that little 6x30 finder on their flagship OTAs like the 9.25"!!!

[wysiwyg]

I am so stocked, because that's exactly the kind of feedback I am looking for from people.
I have looked at those links briefly but its exactly the kind of info I was after.
Thanks again Doug!:thumbsup:

[dugnsuz]

my pleasure:)
Doug:thumbsup:

[wysiwyg]

Well I had a go at adjusting the clipped histogram, there is quite a bit of difference I was not expecting that.

Here are the two images, clipped and non-clipped, judge for your self.

Thanks again Doug.:thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

Wow from beginner to expert in the space of one thread...looks terrific ...
great effort fantastic result.

alex

[mill]

Splendid!! finished them today :)

[mill]

Sorry.
Back to the tread.
The non clipped pic is much better and has a lot more detail :)

[dugnsuz]

WOW!!!:eyepop:
Look at all the wispy detail you brought out of the background.
Well done
All the best
Doug:thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

That is a great result, Mark!

Lovely bits of Nebula going all over the frame now :thumbsup:

Quite a dramatic image :)

[iceman]

Great re-work, Mark!

[smersh]

Love that:thumbsup:

What weights (or method) did you use to combine the the differing exposures (ie 1x10s + 2x90s + 2x240s @ 800ISO)

Did you add / avg or what?

Michael

[wysiwyg]

Michael,

Firstly I converted my RAW's into TIF's using PS, and also manually aligned using cut and paste on to each frame and then used "difference" selection from layers. I only did this as I had only 5 frames to deal with.
I noticed some field rotation on some of the frames and adjusted the rotation also. I then saved each adjusted frame as another tiff file.

I had already done black frame subtraction while taking the light frames (in camera function of the D200).

Then I loaded up the images in DSS, ran the stack and used Log/Log/Log on the RGB Levels, and 0 luminance and added some saturation.

Then did my final processing in PS where I also used masking to overcome the burnout and used the 10s image. Adjusted black and white points, Shadow highlights, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Unsharp Mask and finally Noise Ninja to remove some noise.

And thats what I turned out with.
I hope that was a clear explanantion.......

[smersh]

OK - You say "Then I loaded up the images in DSS, ran the stack and used Log/Log/Log on the RGB Levels"

What stack method did you use? was it add, average, median weighted?

what's the log/log/log bit mean?

[wysiwyg]

Sorry, I'm still new to DSS, but on checking I used Median.

In DSS once the stacking has finished you get 3 tabs "RGB/K Levels, Luminance, Saturation"

On the three sliders of RGB you can choose various methods in which RGB is combined (I am assuming) rangin from Linear, Cube root to (Log/Log), and that is the one I used.

Does that help?