M42 Fun

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

I've managed to collect about 1700 x 10 second subs of m42. 10 second subs because I am using an old Meade LX200R 8" in Alt Az.

I still had to throw away about 600 other images I had collected because even 10 seconds can be a bit much sometimes for 'Gary' as we call him.

I used SIRIL to process the images with a basic OSC and background extraction script (easy).
Photmetric Calibration, Remove Green Noise, stretch and export ready for GIMP.

In GIMP I used Shadows/Highlights to really bring out the faint details that would otherwise have just appeared black.

Processed a little with Topaz Denoise AI (pretty cool stuff).

Opened it in GIMP again and destroyed it down to less than 200kb.

Loving the ZWO 2600 MC P. (even with the oil leak twice already - no big deal to clean up and get going again)

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

maybe I went to hard on the colour?..

[AstroViking (Steve)]

Hi Daryl,

Looks good to me! Plenty of detail in the gas & dust clouds, and none of stars or core area is over exposed - well done to achieve this.

As for colours, they're all subjective and depend on what palette you process with, and how you process the image data. In other words, don't stress over it - so long as you have an image you're happy with then it's a good one.

Cheers,
V

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

Thanks V. I think the core not being over exposed is a bonus side affect of 10 second subs... I haven't stuffed around with star masks / masking mulitple layers. This is only one layer in GIMP so it made processing really easy.

So with that in mind (question to the greater ICE brain) is there a benefit of taking subs of different lengths? Different layers put together in PS for the different time lengths showing different details.

Thanks

Daryl

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

That's really good Daryl, really well done, that's a lot of exposures ...I can't help but think that this is what I might see, were I to use a wide field eyepiece and peer through an 8m class telescope, under dark skies ...maybe not quite as vibrant colour but still...

Mike

[Dave882 (David)]

Huuuuuge effort and a great result! Must be smoke coming out of your pc after all that stacking/processing. I really love the subtle detail revealed in the bright areas that would normally be lost with longer subs. Great work!

[barryehc (Barry)]

Brilliant photo Daryl and nice choice of colours. Visually I see M42 in shades of grey with a hint of green. Its hard to know what the actual colours would be. I guess some [h alpha] wouldn't register in human eyes anyway.
barry

[Camissa (Ecki)]

I love the detail in the nebulosity. The Orion Nebula must be colourful, I don't think you did too much. Well done.

Kudos for processing 1100 images.