Orion Nebula

[Lester]

Hi all,

this image captured with 14" LX200 at f6.3, Orion delux OAG, Orion Starshoot auto guider, Astro 40D at iso 800. This is a combination of 3 and 1 minute and 10 second exposures, total of 41 stacked in DSS. Processed in Photoshop.

Gradually getting the hang of using the OAG.

Any comments welcome, as I am not completely happy with the colour/contrast, but it's as good as I can get for now.

ps the image is not cropped, so shows the peripheral stars that are not points due to the SCT characteristics.



http://i638.photobucket.com/albums/u...in10sec42o.jpg

[duncan]

Nice, very nice.
Cheers,
Duncan

[bmitchell82 (Brendan)]

hey there lester, not a bad crack at the object.

- try giving your exps with the 14" more like 5 or 6 min at a higher ISO with the astro cooling mod you can get more data showing up.

the rest is in the processing and its of personal taste/skill take a look at ken crawfords online tutorials, they should give you a good kick in the pants towards the right direction!

Brendan

[Lester]

Thanks Duncan and Brendan for your comments. I agree, my processing skills, or lack of, need to improve a lot.

[spearo (Frank)]

Nice work
it may be the layer type inthe masking process of the core that is generating the dark spots near the trap.
I'd mask it in a layer and try different types of blends (just scrolling down) with preview turned on.
Often it either normal, overlay, soft or Hard light that work best for me.
I also try to blend at less than 100% fill/opacity to see how that affects it
hope this helps
cheers
frank

[Lester]

Thanks for your reply Frank. I have only just learnt how to load the Astro actions into Photoshop. Been doing curves mostly, with some star reduction and high pass filtering.

Appreciate your help.