M42 is back

[multiweb]

3 subs stacked on M42 before dawn - got light too quickly by the time it cleared my roof over the east. so only 3x1min celestron 5" QHY8 autoguided with PHD ED80 on G11.

http://www.multiweb.com.au/astro/M42.jpg

[Matty P]

Great capture Marc and for only 3 subs you've done a great job. I'm looking forward to when M42 rises in the night sky.

Very well done. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

That's very good.

If you could do some flats it would improve it further as you can see some dust donuts in spots.

Greg.

[TrevorW]

Nice shot, what post processing was done

Cheers

[leon]

Nice going Marc, yep, can't wait for M42 to get a bit higher, always the highlight of the year.

Leon

[AlexN]

Im considering holding out on testing out my QHY8 for a couple more weeks untill I can get the IC434 + B33 + M42 + M43 in one widefield :).

Great shot Marc, especially for only 3 mins data! Very cool.

[Bassnut]

Marc, very nice indeed. M42 has been done to death, but your composition is just a bit different, top work.

[multiweb]

Thank you all for the kind words and comments.


Thanks Greg. Yep - totally agree . Flats are still a bit of a problem for me. I can't do proper ones. Too dark or too light. Getting there though.


Thansk Trevor. I stacked the three subs in CCD stack, mean combine then off to photoshop [CS3]. Tweaked the levels then run one pass of Noiseware Professional [night scene] to get rid of most of the noise. Then I duplicated the layer, run a high pass filter 5.5 and blended back at 30% in overlay mode. I also used the shadow/highlight to tone down bright areas and bring up dark ones.



Thanks Alex. You'll love the camera. It's fun and easy to use.