M 42... the most photographed deep space object? :)

[LewisM]

Had to wait till 2 am, but was worth it.

While waiting, I perfected my polar alignment, added in PEC and a PAE. Finally was able to do 2 min subs without any trailing, unguided, so that was good for me for the night (my guider is on order).

This is 32 subs, 9 darks, 4 flats. I think it came to 12 minutes in total once DeepSky Stacker stacked them all, with a setting of 35% acceptance. Doesn't matter :)

Still SEVERE light pollution (I was getting green cast pollution from street light reflections off trees!), which washed it out some, but happy with the detail. Tried colour correcting and cropping it a little, but looks processed to me - I NEED MY DARK PLACE NOW! :(

[stardust steve]

well worth the wait. Great detail:thumbsup:

[Shiraz]

very nice image for no guiding - I did a background balance in Nebulosity to get rid of the green cast and it looks pretty neat. would it be OK with you to post it in your thread?

[LewisM]

ABSOLUTELY! Please do!

[Shiraz]

here is then - Nebulosity has an auto background balance function that generally does a nice job of getting rid of casts.

[LewisM]

I downloaded Nebulosity a couple days ago and haven't gotten around to playing with it yet... seems like I will have to!

THANKS!

[Shiraz]

If you haven't already got it, the other bit of software that you may consider is IRIS - but only look at it if you are willing to invest a lot of time in working out how to use it, since it is very user unfriendly (for example some functions are in drop down menus, but most are command line??). IRIS has an incredible range of powerful tools, including a background removal process that could clean up the uneven background in your wide field image.