[Paulyman (Paul)]

Hi all,

Since the smoke is still hanging around, as well as the much needed showers, I thought I'd go back and look at my old data.

I decided to have a go at reprocessing my first DSO image of M42 taken back in October 2018. I used my WO Star 71 and Canon 550D on the HEQ5 before I had worked out guiding. The image consisted of 5 hours of 60s subs, unguided and with the camera sensor reading 30C according to BYEOS.

At the time all I really knew how to do was use levels and curves in photoshop, I had no idea about noise reduction or masks etc. The first image below was the best I could achieve at the time.

Yesterday I decided to have a crack at reprocessing the image from the ground up using PixInsight. Now it is far from perfect, I couldn't save the blown out core for instance but I assume I'd need some much shorter subs and some HDR for that. It is much better than the original attempt though, look at all that dust that was just hiding in the noise!