M42- Pleasing first attempts.

[leinad]

Big thankyou to AlexN for assisting with Drift aligning; worked flawlessly. :thumbsup:Everything seemed to come together tonight; alignment was reasonably good, weather cleared and gave me the opportunity to test everything out.
PHD seemed to crash on me sometimes, and Laptop would BSOD on kb.sys? But besides that I was able to push 2mins for the first time! *big grin*

Guided with PHD/captured in Nebulosity2.

EDITED (re-processed):
10x 2min ISO800/CWB
10x 2min ISO400/CWB

(No darks, decided to pack it in before got to darks)
Stacked in DSS, Over-processed in PS.

:D

[Kirkus]

2 min. subs! Nice first go at it. Is this with your 8" Newt?

Very nice.

[leon]

Agreed for a first go at this one you have done very well, it can be a difficult one at times with the core burning out, nice work.

Leon

[Screwdriverone]

Beautiful shot Leinad!

Fantastic effort. Well done.

Cheers

Chris

[AlexN]

Very nice mate.. I dare say that theres more data in there you can bring out with further processing too!

Perfect tracking, good focus, nice detail... You must be stoked!

Well done indeed.
Alex

[TrevorW]

Great first attempt. I re-imaged this one last night for my second attempt at it guided 30 X 2 minute plus 2 X 5m but yet to process so I'll see how it compares when I do.

Chehrs

[leinad]

Image looks much too dark on the LCD monitor at work. Have to be careful of brightness/contrast when processing in future. Image was cropped roughly 70% of original .



Very stoked! I also did 10 x2mins ISO400, 5 x2mins ISO1600.. but only did a quick process with 10 x 2mins@ISO800.

I'll have to reprocess tonight, and take some quick darks as well. Though I should have done this on the night, to eliminate hot pixels/noise.

Lots of detail popped up when I was playing with Levels and Curves, though with a color image I had trouble balancing the colors and darkness right. Have to practice image processing some more.



Thanks Trev! M42 is just a perfect, easy target. Bring On the galaxies! :)



Captured with the Saxon ED80, guided with ST80 piggybacked.

[multiweb]

Great picture. Top tracking and excellent focus. You're on your way to big things. :thumbsup:

[leinad]

Reprocessed. I think 2nd attempt looks much better. Core stands out a little better with the inclusion of some ISO400 exp stacked also. Could only get so much detail out with seeing more noise. Gee' image processing is a time consuming process. lol

[wysiwyg]

I agree, the second one looks the bees knees :thumbsup:

Nicely framed too!

[leinad]

Cheers :thumbsup: I could only get so much detail out of the wisps, and was difficult to not blowout the core too much. I'll need to capture in RAW next time also, instead of FITS I think to make processing easier...:shrug: :doh:

[wysiwyg]

Always capture in RAW, if you are using software like Images Plus to stack, it can either convert to FITS or TIF 8 or 16bit.

[leinad]

Yeah, I was capturing images using Nebulosity for the first time. By default it was set to FITS. Still experimenting. :whistle:

[AlexN]

The color balance in the 2nd shot is much better indeed... :)

If you want to zip a stacked, unprocessed copy, I could have a go at the processing for you... Cant guarantee miracles, but I think theres more nebulosity hidden in there somewhere!

Cheers mate, Definitely on the right track!

Alex.

[h0ughy]

great first image - and apart from the setup, drift alignment, lights , darks, bias's flats and coffee, processing is an art that one has to learn, i am still struggling with basic concepts, so a nice image to learn by

[leinad]

Managed to push a little more detail in the wisps.
Darks, Bias's, Flats and longer exposures on the to-do list.

It's a very proud and rewarding feeling processing the images after a good night. If only the weather in Perth would hurry up and bring more clear skies!

Thanks for the comments. :)