M42 (finally!)

[RobF]

Back in Dec and early January, before Qld weather went to pot, I collected more data than I've ever managed for M42. The goal was to get a 2 frame mosaic using the Newt and QHY9, all collected from my suburban location over multiple nights.

Pixinsight has some newer powerful mosaic features that needed exploring along with native HDR functions that were appealing for such a project. I quickly discovered however my 32bit XP OS couldn't cope with the massive 64bit files. Eventually a dual boot Ubuntu 64 bit PI install solved this (yes, I'm still a 32 bit XP laggard :ashamed:). Figuring out how to assemble the 5 filters relatively seamlessly was still an educational adventure however, thus the very late M42 presentation.

This was about 13hrs of data all up (about 6.5hrs per frame).
Combination of 5 and 4 min subs for fainter areas and 60 and 45sec subs for bright areas. Technically this is a HaL HaR G HaB concoction using PI pixelmath.
An early processing effort on the dust in a single frame is here for those interested:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=88162

Anyone, thanks for looking. Comments on this frankenstein most welcome.

[rustigsmed]

Awesome!

[RickS]

Very impressive, Rob, and I bet you learnt a lot! Are you going to unleash a high res version?

Cheers,
Rick.

[jjjnettie]

It must be a pleasure to work with that much data Rob. :)
Looking forward to catching up with you soon at AF.

[peter_4059]

Awesome Rob. That's quite a lot of work.

[davewaldo]

Awesome mate, as always :thumbsup:

[telecasterguru]

Everything looks good. Colour, framing, guiding.

Frank

[strongmanmike]

A great M42 Rob, worth the wait and effort huh? :thumbsup:

Mike

[astronobob]

Stunning Rob, a dream image for many like myself, Top Show and credit to your work :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Nice one Rob. Very fiery colors. Some of the blue stars cores are a little muted (or it could be my crappy monitor) but the rest is top shelf. Good one. :thumbsup:

[june]

:eyepop:what a beauty

[rcheshire]

Brilliant Rob. PI runs very well in ubuntu.

[Stevec35]

A lovely M42. Well worth all the effort.

Cheers

Steve

[gregbradley]

A spectacular M42 Rob. My hats off to you for your perseverence and effort.

Greg.

[batema]

Yes fantastic Rob. The colours and clarity of it all is great. Well done.

Mark

[RobF]

Hi everyone. Thanks for the encouragement.



Thanks for looking Russell



I'm oversampled on a relatively narrow FOV Rick, so higher it's not like swimming around in one of Mike's 16803 renditions, but I've put up a full size jpg here for those interested:
https://picasaweb.google.com/UserRobF/RecentWork#5732299488696156626
(click on Full Screen and press f11 for full screen, or download)




It was fun when the last of the Ha was in and realised I was started to get "dusty" JJJ. Not so much fun when I fully processed both frames then found I'd have to go back and merge the raw frames before stretching etc ;)
Heck, it'll be AF time before we blink! Yep, be good to hang out with everyone again.



Thanks Peter - I had high hopes for getting into the Rosette and Cone nebs too, but my imaging diary shows everything ground to a halt weather-wise after 4/1/12 :(



G'day Dave! Great to hear from you. Thanks mate :thanx:



Thanks Frank. I was a bit worried about my stars, but ran out of puff to fiddle much more.



Yes Mike, but I'm still to feel an itch to do a Sidonio.....:D
(or maybe some zoom fields)



Thanks Bob - I think I read somewhere you've got an 8" F4 coming? You'll have a ball with it not to mention bit wider FOV than I have. :thumbsup:



Yes Marc, I debated going back to scratch and deconvolving the blue channel to shrink the blue overlap in many of them, but I couldn't face going right back in the end. I have eroded some of them to soften the effect, so some of them now look a bit "mush" I suspect.
I'm actually starting to wonder if on my next big project I shot shorter blue frames versus red and green, but take more of them. Should theoretically shrink the "bloat" but preserve blue detail??



Cheers June :)



Yes Rowland, I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to finally play with Linux, and Ubuntu is fun to explore. PI certainly much more responsive, and it's eerie how consistent the interface is across OS's. I did have a weird problem configuring my internet connection for a while which made life tough initially, but sorted now. :thumbsup:



Thanks Steve



Thanks for that Greg. Hopefully weather will allow some new multi-night projects sooner rather than later. I never thought I'd be able to see this much of M42 when I started in 1980 with my 4.5" Tasco Newt. Hadn't even heard of the "Running Man" back then :)

[troypiggo]

Awesome!

Might have to have a chat with you some time about the PI Ha blending pixel maths. Did you use Vicent's method? Or just pure pixel maths without the continuum stuff? Haven't had any replies in that thread on PI forum yet :(

[DavidTrap]

Very nice Rob,

Where do I sign up for your PI workshop?

DT

[troypiggo]

We could/should have a Brissie PI processing hookup :)

[DavidTrap]

Definitely - there are a few of you out there who seem to have a far greater understanding of this complex software than this mere mortal does. I would love to be involved in a "ruthless distillation" of the techniques for PI.

DT

[RickS]

Sounds good, but I'd better collect some data first and reacquaint myself with processing. It has been a long time since I imaged and it doesn't look like this new moon weekend is going to break the "drought" :mad2:

[marc4darkskies]

Very nicely done Rob! An excellent rendition! :thumbsup: The full res version is impressive too.

Cheers, Marcus

[Ross G]

A great photo Rob.

Beautiful colour and detail.


Ross.

[RobF]

Thanks Troy, David, Rick, Marcus and Ross.

Troy, I've been digging back trying to find all the threads I read and which ones I followed in the end, but I can't remember no to be honest! Must be getting old. I think I was trying to follow the 100%Ha +R, G, 30%Ha + Blue recipe, but found that was too harsh on the blues. I believe there is about 15% Ha added to blue, 100% to red, and the "lum" is a mixture of L and Ha. The Ha was good for bring out dust, but I liked the star profiles in the Lum most.

Processing it in HDR was a bit of an extravagance rather than just feathering in the trapezium at the end. It seemed to help on brighter stars too to some extent, avoiding excessive bloat.

As far as getting together over PI, I'd be happy to some time. Who'll be at Astrofest? Not that far away now....
(we could do some "Rotunda laptop yakking")

[LucasB]

Well done Rob. Super effort which resulted in a super image!:thumbsup:
Lucas

[2stroke]

Thats one mint image :) drooling here :P

[RobF]

Thanks for checking it out Lucas and Jay :)