Early Season Orion in Ha

[glend (Glen)]

What else do you do at 3am on a moonlit night? This was my first go with the ASI1600MM-C on Orion. Getting the camera setting right was the purpose of the exercise. My normal narrowband approach (at 300", Unity Gain) would not work on this bright monster. Eventually settled on Gain 105, Offset 15 (I think it was), and a sub length of 120". This is just a test image, only 11 x120" subs. No Darks, Bias frames, etc, just the skinny 11 subs. I need to shoot some shorter test subs to see if can get a Trapezium mask going but looks like the cloud is coming back. I might go over to LRGB next week as I can accomplish more in the little time available to capture this target this month.

Astrobin links are here:

Detail page: http://www.astrobin.com/264879/

Full screen: http://www.astrobin.com/full/264879/0/

[Atmos (Colin)]

I had the same thought at 3:30am this morning when the clouds FINALLY drifted away. I had considered Orion but landed on the horse head as I hadn't done it before.

M42 is difficult because of its ENORMOUS dynamic range but it looks quite well handled. I thought you'd have gone that bit lower to about the Gain 75 mark for that bit of extra dynamic range.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Looks good Glen, maybe I would try to avoid clipping histogram. I look forward to the LRGB version

I hope you do not mind - sharing a link to my test narrowband image taken 3 years ago with Atik 428, 60-second subs and at f/6: http://www.astrobin.com/full/58376/B/