Orion Nebula

[Camissa (Ecki)]

Last week we had some very nice seeing here. There is no tilt in the image train of my large refractor anymore, so I used the opportunity to grab some Orion Nebula data. This is my first experience with the Extended Full Well mode of the QHY600M and I am delighted!



60x120s Green, 60x120s Blue, 90x120s Red
QHY600M, Astrodon E-Series
TEC Apo160FL @1000mm

Here is a better quality image at Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/full/6gsioa/0/

Clear Skies,
Ecki

[alpal]

Hi Ecki,
a picture from South Africa! -
that's a wonderful image with pinpoint stars to every corner.
I see you have all premium equipment from:
mount to telescope to camera to filters.
What reducer are you using to work at 1000mm ?
The QHY-600M has 9576 x 6388 pixels -
looks like you just divided the pic by 4 to get 2394 x 1597 pixels?
Are you showing a cropped version of your picture or is that the full frame?
Most people would have to do a mosaic to get such a wide FOV.
I see you had no need for Luminance.
I looked at your other pictures on Astrobin - well done.

cheers
Allan

[Camissa (Ecki)]

Hi Allan,

thank you for the nice comment. This was done with the TEC FRC 0.9x FlattenerReducerCorrector. I cropped just the edges to remove some dither artefacts. This was my processing workflow:

Pixinsight: WBPP -> NSG -> Integration -> RGBCombination -> SpectroPhotometric Color Calibration with a G2V star (our sun) -> MaskedStretch -> TIF

Photoshop: Sharpening -> remove a bit of green -> export 25% of original size

I will try to grab some luminance and also some H-alpha when we have a few clear nights this week.

My two imaging scopes have a focal length 1000mm (TEC 160FL with 0.9x reducer, f/6.3) and 590mm (A-P 130 GTX with 0.72x reducer, f/4.5). For the 1000mm configuration my field is perfectly flat and I can use the full frame sensor without cropping. In the 590mm I still have a bit of tilt but it is my personal goal to have this perfect by the end of the year too.

I was a pure visual observer with a crazy love for refractors. Covid lockdown made me build an observatory and start imaging. The Orion is the third image from the observatory. So when it comes to imaging I am a beginner.

Cheers,
Ecki

[alpal]

Thanks Ecki,
thanks for that info - the flattener/reducer is working perfectly.

Well they don't look like beginners pictures
and I'm not familiar with your workflow - it sounds advanced.

With Orion up so nicely right now I'm surprised you're not
excited to take the Flame and Horse Head nebulas in one frame too?
With Luminance and Ha you might be able to pick up more of the dusty background:
https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/file...field_hero.jpg
although maybe it would take a lot more integration time?


cheers
Allan

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Really lovely, well balanced image Ecki. The high-res was well worth the look.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yes a nice bit of kit and a lovely result on a classic summer target Ecki

Mike

[gregbradley]

Nice work.

So the core was not blown out in 60 second exposures? That is good to hear.

Greg.

[Camissa (Ecki)]

Thank you for the nice comments.

the core was not blown out in 60 second exposures?

When I made test images to decide on the exposure time, I was surprised that NINAs statistics showed less than 400 clipped pixels (out 61 Million) at 120sec. With the AP130 operating at f/4.5 even 60 seconds are already a bit too much. If there is interest, I can show a comparison etc.

CS Ecki