Orion and Running Man Nebulae

[gregbradley]

I intend hammering this area this year and am looking forward to megadata and mosaic madness.

But for a start here is modest exposure captured 3 weeks ago now.

LRGB 50 20 20 20 with 5 x 15 sec LRGB superimposed on the bright core area.

Tak BRC 250, Apogee U16M, Baader LRGB filters.

http://www.pbase.com/image/104333829 1200 x 1200

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/104333876/original 4000 x 4000 approx.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/104334370 M42 crop

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/104334268/large Running Man Nebula crop






Greg.

[Craig_L]

Simply lovely Greg. So much detail and colour - that lovely chocolate colour I haven't seen before. Very inspiring.

[Tilt]

Stunning. Very nice image.

Michael

[bluescope]

Very nice Greg. Robert Gendler has a mosaic of the Orion region that is simply awe inspiring.

http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/M42mosaicNMportrait.html

:thumbsup:

[Octane]

Greg,

Another stunner.

Love it.

Regards,
Humayun

[Hagar]

Hi Greg Stunning image. The colour is a bit vibrant for me but that is just personal choice.

[multiweb]

Very nice Greg :thumbsup:. Love the running man crop. How do you color calibrate your pictures before processing? Do you use CCD Stack to combine?

[gregbradley]

Yes I think you are right. I redid it this morning and combined the core area with the main image before I did the colour tweaking so it all went together rather than the full processing largely already done and then the combine of the core and main image.

It is now a bit more muted.

These Baader filters also have excellent red transmission, better than other filters so images with them tend to be more vibrant in the red areas.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I use CCDstack to do darks, flats and hot/cold pixel removal then register (align) and stack. I don't do much colour work in CCDstack as it is an unwieldy program memory wise and colour images are a bit too much for it.
I try to minimise use of DDP as it can black clip the image a bit especially if you use auto.

I save the resulting image as a RAW Tiff. I used to use scaled but again the histogram is often slightly black clipped and it is better to use levels/curves in Photoshop to bring up the image as you have way more control and wind up usually with a nice bell curved histogram which is the optimum image.

I then use Photoshop. Curves/levels to bring up the image and have the histograms of all colours running to make them more balanced and get rid of any bias. Then usually shadows/highlights which can brighten an image sometimes more effectively than curves without increasing noise or blowing out highlights (usually use shadows/highlights to get the bright areas under control and make the overall image a tad brighter.

Then very little else depending on the image. Noise Ninja is a very handy tool, I also use layered sharpening often not always, I don't often use unsharp mask or smart sharpen as sharpening the whole image often damages the stars. I use Noel Carboni Photoshop actions to increase star colour very often (quick, easy and very effective - his best tool).
I also often use Gradient Xterminator early on after levels/curves if there is too much background green or red etc. Not sure why I sometimes get this even at a dark site - perhaps lower altitude images suffer from atmospheric extinction and also this large chipped camera is more sensitive to the need for good flats than other cameras I have used.

Then save it as a 16bit tiff and then switch to 8bit and save as a jpeg in various sizes for posting on the internet.

That is my usual routine with very little change from image to image. Some images need hardly anything - they fall in your lap. Thats what I aim for and that comes from all your basic capture tech being as good as you can get it (polar alignment, autoguiding humming, focus, framing, exposure length, total exposure time, best filters, best camera, best scope, collimated, cleanliness of filters/scope, good flats, good darks etc etc.).

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Yes it is. I won't be doing 90 hours but maybe 20. I am also at F5 rather than F9 so 20 hours at F5 is worth what about 70 at F9??

Also my FSQ with reducer is F3.64 and super widefield. I like the huge Ha/dust area around Orion and want to do a mosaic. This huge FOV fairly high resolution setup should include the whole sword of Orion area. It probably would only be a 4 image mosaic to get it with Ha LRGB.

Greg.

[sjastro]

Hello Greg.

Are your referring to a gradient or colour cast?

It's usually blue filtered images that suffer from atmospheric extinction.

I occassionally have green/magenta gradients in my images even though my site is reasonably dark.

It finally dawned on me the gradients were processing induced. I found my RGB images were gradient free but when combined as an LRGB the gradients appeared. (The L images were also gradient free). It was caused by overstetching the L images.

Even the choice of combining software can effect gradients.

Regards

Steven

[gregbradley]

Hi Steven,

Interesting. I'll keep an eye out for that.

I have also noticed though that this large chip needs very good flats and flatting out the image isn't as easy as it usually is with say the STL11.
Sometimes the flats worsen the image.

This M42 image for example does not have any flats used in the 15 sec core shots as the flats were wrecking the image.

My flats also don't always seem to make the whole image even but leave a darker area in the top 1/4 of the image. Probably not taking enough flats and median combining them. Or flats taken when the camera was at its lowest temp (the Apogee has a slow ramp up cooling system designed to reduce thermal shock but it requires you to plan ahead as it takes about 40 minutes to get to the target temp).

Either way Gradient Xterminator is an awesome tool.

Greg.

[bluescope]

I look forward to seeing it !

:thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Yes it's mind boggling indeed!

However...this was taken with a 12" F3.6 with a single frame and just 2.5hrs or so of total exposure:

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/104357712/original

Not too much difference really although Rob's has more "body" for sure.

This is why I wanted one of these fast corrected newts so bad... :(

I think this image may have actually spured Rob to do that 90hr mozaic ? :lol:

Mike

[Ric]

What a beauty Greg, fine work.

I'm looking forward to more of your work in this area.

Cheers

[Bassnut]

Excellent neb extention for modest exposure time Greg, top work.

[gregbradley]

Thanks.

I think I left a bit in this image.

I did some more work on it.

Do you think this is an improvement? It is brighter and sharper.

The depth of the data is remarkable for only 1 hour and 50 minutes. Gotta love F5.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/104365325

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Rob gets inspired to do imaging like anyone else.

Not long after I posted a series of images of the Vela Supernova Remnant like this:

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/93999494

Rob did his magnificent 14.25 inch RCOS mosaic of the area.

Oh well, there's always someone better at something than ourselves eh?

Greg.

[Bassnut]

Holy cow Greg, that 2nd M42 post is awesome, excellent work.

And Mike, here we go, and exactly what input did you have on Chris's M42 ?

[Matty P]

Fantastic images Greg. So much detail I'm scared I'll get lost.

The second image you have posted is excellent.

Keep up the great work.

:thumbsup:

[peeb61]

Great capture Greg...I hope your so proud of this one.
Just beautiful!

Paul

[AlexN]

the fine detail in and depth of the image are fantastic. The area between M42 and M43 is great.. I very much look forward to a megadata mosaic...

Should I get EQMOD going in the next few months I was hoping to do a mosaic of M42 myself...

May I ask, How much exposure time classifies an image as 'Megadata'

Given some clear nights I would like 9 - 10, possibly 20hrs of data in this area...

[gregbradley]

Yes that is the sort of time frame I was thinking of. 10 - 20 hours.
A mosaic probably would take 4 frames of about 2 hours each for Ha LRGB minimum. I wanted to go deep on Ha so perhaps more.

Greg.

[h0ughy]

wow - that is some imaging!!

[AlexN]

mmm My plan is 12hrs Ha, 13hrs color... equal amount of 15, 10 and 5min subs for Ha and color, half an hour of 1min color subs, and half an hour of ~20/30 second subs. to tame the trap....

[RB]

Lovely images Greg with strikingly beautiful colours.
Well done.



Interesting, on a mammoth proportion.

[gregbradley]

Orion Neb isn't that pretty really in Ha it is more the surrounding areas that look great in Ha. It brings those gassy/dusty areas up and the extent of it becomes clearer. M42 itself isn't enhanced much by adding Ha.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Yeh that's excellent :thumbsup:

I love seeing all the surrounding dust.

The trap region looks a bit wonky though, another hash at that might be worth considering..?

Fantastic outfit you have though Greg, I, like many others here I'm sure, am suitably jealous :eyepop:

Mike

[AlexN]

Interesting to know... I'll keep that in mind, and maybe bring it down to 2 - 4hrs Ha and the rest in color...

HaHa(R+Ha)GB was the plan..

Any ideas on better ways to use the data?

[Alchemy]

very nice, the dust detail between m42 and the running man is superb. be interesting to see what you think you can do to improve it.

[gregbradley]

Depends on what you are imaging with. A slow scope will require longer exposure time.

This is the sort of thing I was referring to that I plan to shoot. 4 panel mosaic with with the Apogee U16M camera which has twice the FOV of this shot taken with an STL11. So 4 panels should hopefully cover the whole sword area.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/99385463

Ha brings out the dust and area around the Horsehead. M42 itself when blended with Ha tends to make the neb look too red and lose its bluish/pink tones.

Greg.

[AlexN]

all food for thought... I could probably fit that much sky into 3 or 4 panels.... I'll be imaging with the M102, F/6.8.. so neither fast nor slow really.. Sorry if this is cluttering your image thread, but I'm trying to get a better understanding of the area so as to plan my image for best results.

Does Orion respond well to OIII or SII? the reason I ask this is that from my light polluted hell, I'd be able to capture as many hrs of narrowband as clear skies allow. Then go for the color data from a dark site during the new moon.. The narrowband information would really only be used as a luminance.. perhaps OIII blended into the blue channel..

[gregbradley]

Hi Alex,

This image I took a year or two ago has Ha O111 LRGB and may even have a touch of S11 in it.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/66499144

The violet glow comes from the O111. I am not sure I like that effect particularly in hindsight.

The Ha adds the deeper reds in the neb itself plus the background gas/dust areas like this:

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/93698947

Although I may not push the red so hard and leave it looking more dusty than deep red.

So I plan a couple of hours each HaLRGB, 4 panel mosaic of the area widefield at F3.64 with the FSQ106EDX and reducer Apogee U16M.

Greg.

[Craig_L]

:eyepop:Awsome images Greg. Love those mosaics.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Craig. They are all single images - no mosaics. A mosaic is something I plan with a similar setup to get the whole area.

Greg.

[Craig_L]

My mistake Greg. So what scope or lens were you using? Checked with your website but couldn't find the info. Saw your fabulous closer shot of the Horsehead and the widefield of the Triffid, Lagoon area. Wonderful. Craig

[gregbradley]

The wide field shots were taken with a Takahashi FSQ106EDX with an F3.64 reducer and an STL11 camera. A really nice setup.

Greg.