M42_Great Nebulae in Orion_09-10-08

[bluescope]

Hi

A short exposure of Orion Nebulae

7x60sec @ -18
William Optics flt110 F7 Triplet
ST2000XCM with MPCC,UV/IR,LPS2
square cropped

:thumbsup:

[Tandum]

Noisey, out of focus and too red ...

Sorry steve ... That seems a bit abrupt.

[RB]

I agree.....it seems a bit abrupt...... ;) :P

Steve there's decent data in there and for 7 min it's got some potential I think.
The beauty is that we can always go back and tweak the levels etc and learn from each other and from our own mistakes.

Here I've taken the liberty to adjust the colour balance/saturation and apply some noise reduction.
Obviously it's a bit difficult working off a web jpg version but it's just to show what's possible by adjusting a few parameters in PS.
You can send me a PM if you like.

Anyway keep up the good work, we all travel this path and learn as we progress.

Looking forward to more from you.

Cheers

:thumbsup:

[Matty P]

For such a short exposures you have done a great job Steve. I think your original image is slightly too red though.

I think Andrew's colour balance is something that you aim for when processing again as the colours are more natural.

Is this a crop?

Well done. :thumbsup:

[leon]

It is a pretty good effort Steve, maybe a bit of what the others said, but all in all a mighty fine result. ;)

Leon :thumbsup:

[bluescope]

I don't believe it is out of focus Robin ... agreed there is a fair bit of noise as you would expect with a 60 second exposure and too red ... probably but then this image was not posted as being the best M42 I have ever done, it's merely the latest session :).

This is a hobby not a competition and there are ways of communicating your opinion without being abrupt ! If, whilst typing a comment you think it may offend you could simply re write it or not comment at all :shrug:

As it is I have broad shoulders so my reply here is a hint for future postings perhaps ............

:thumbsup:

[bluescope]

Cheers Andrew,

Hi Andrew

Thanks for your comments and tweaking. This image started out as being a combo of different length exposures but I changed tack after doing the 60 second shots and slewed to M45 for something different before it went out of my line of sight .... then I'd had enough for the night and hit the sack. I tried stacking the rgb's and the core burned out ( as usual ) so I stacked the fits files which can be more tricky to process but generally keep stars tighter and reduce over exposure problems common with rgb files ... just posted the image for something to do really.

:thumbsup:



Thanks Matt, it is a square crop as there was a lot of surrounding noise due to the short exposures which the SBIG ST2000XCM doesn't like very much, it's a bit different to a DSLR ... not as forgiving.

:thumbsup:



Cheers Leon, thanks for your ever encouraging remarks mate !

:thumbsup:

[Jen]

:thumbsup: im so happy that Orion is back again thanks for sharing Steve :thumbsup:

[bluescope]

My pleasure Jen, thanks for looking !

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Looks like nice data Steve, Given a few months it will be rising earlier and the longer imaging session can begin!! :) I dare say the FLT110 will tear Orion a new one!! Andrews re-work turned out very nice, bit more contrast and coloring corrected, however as you say, its a 7min quicky and as such, I will say its pretty damn good.


I look forward to seeing a longer exposure shot..

[bluescope]

Cheers Alex, it will be nice when it rises earlier ... also IC434 that I want to do again with the new scope and with my 254mm Newt.

:thumbsup:

[Kirkus]

Seeing that you're obviously further along in this hobby than I am, Steve, I'd be tickled to shoot an image like that.

:thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Nice image steve, Needs a little work but thats all part of the learning curve. I love this part of the sky but cannot seem to get an image of GON that I am happy with. It's a hard target with such a wide range of colour and detail.
Keep at it you are coming along very well.

[bluescope]

Glad you like it ... I have done better but with a different scope etc.

:thumbsup:



Yes Orion is tricky, as I said to Andrew this started out being a compilation of several different exposures but I changed tack part way through ... I'm sure I will be imaging it again in the coming months.

:thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Nice image. Quite pretty really.

Gradient Xterminator, levels and curves brings it up, Noise Ninja (run twice) a bit of shadows/highlights then
pull back saturation a tad, increase blue and green a bit and pull back red a bit and it looks pretty schimcko.

PM me if you want that copy.

Greg.

[bluescope]

I'd love to see it Greg ........

:thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Here it is;

http://www.pbase.com/image/104362015

Some advice. I had an STL11XCM one shot colour camera for about a year and a half.

I talked to Alan Holmes at Sbig about the camera once.

His advice was to do the longest subexposure time you can like 30 minutes.

I found 30 minutes impractical for a few reasons ; tracking errors, investing too much time in a single exposure and being vulnerable to cloud interference etc.

But the point is the one shot colour camera has to work a lot harder than a mono camera as 4 pixels make up one colour pixel and the dye filters are not as efficient as the mono ones. So to get over the noise you need longer exposures. I used 15 minutes as standard. I also ran the camera as cold as I could possibly get it. -35C was optimum. Make sure you have darks made up of as many subexposures as possible. 6 - 8 would be minimum.

I used to callibrate in CCDstack and then align and combine using sigma 3 channel combine (correct name?) in Images Plus which seemed to give the best combine (it combines all 3 colour channels separately).

If you take a Ha image, bin the camera 2x2.

I found the above very helpful.

In hindsight I would think Noise Ninja would be a really needed accessory as one shot colour tends to be noisier in the dim areas than their mono equivalent.

That said one shot colour is fun to use, easy to process and you can get some excellent results. Also every image taken counts whereas with mono you can miss out on an image because clouds came over before you got say the blue filtered image. They are best on brighter objects and weakest on dim objects on objects with dim areas where the colour noise starts to show through.

I liked it.

Greg.

[Bassnut]

Steve

Youve started something here :P. Hope you dont mind.......... but.

Greg, nice work but its a tad oversmoothed and the core is still blown, and noisy outer.

My tweak. :D.

Let the unauthorised tweak war begin :whistle:

[gregbradley]

Ah yuk Fred, you brought back all the noise in the background that was carefully smoothed out!!:lol:

The core is better though. Steve asked me to post it.

It can be sharpness versus noise sometimes.

Greg.

[Bassnut]

Ahrg, your right Greg. Shouldnt have started :P.

Anyway, I gave it another shot, I give up :P

[bluescope]

Thanks guys it's good to see how different people process the same image ... I'll have to give you a better shot to play around with next time.

:thumbsup: