Orion Colours

[rainwatcher (Peter)]

The attached photo of Orion. Canon 100D at Prime of a F10 SCT. 15 sec. ISO 1600. Over houses from my backyard. Very hot day, fair seeing.
The unprocessed (just converted from RAW to JPG) photo shows a high degree of magenta and violet colouration, more so than many of the other shots of this nebula i have taken, although with other equipment. Also the magenta bar to the NNE is quite pronounced and straight. I took about a dozen shots and all were the same.
Is this colouring an artifact of the atmosphere, something in my camera and software set up, or in fact normal and all my other equipment photos have been showing less colour than they should have ?

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

looks like my early stuff - same colours exactly.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Such a great close up shot. Very nice colors and details. If you can fix those trailing stars it will be one for the pool room. Shame coz you had nailed the focus on that one.

[rainwatcher (Peter)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Such a great close up shot. Very nice colors and details. If you can fix those trailing stars it will be one for the pool room. Shame coz you had nailed the focus on that one.

Thanks Marc, surprisingly i just picked one at random for the post and just happened to pick the worst one, 5 of the 12 have no trailing at all and the stacked image is good, although i have not mastered the processing yet and i am a long way from producing a good enhanced stacked image. Practice, practice, its all fun.

[Grimmeister (Anthony)]

Hi Peter,

Your colours look fine for a non modded camera and a great start, attached is my latest best attempt at Orion (getting to point where I am happy with the resulr).

If you have a modded camera you will see alot more pinks and reds in the image.

If you are imaging from a light poluted area just make sure you get lots of subs to get better signal to noise ratio. Happy to give you some pointers if you want, just PM me.

Cheers

Anthony

[Helo (Peter)]

Hi Peter, My photos last year were exactliy like yours also whereas this year with longer exposures and stacking them I have gained better colour (exactly the same unmodded camera) - just have to work on my focus and tracking (and hope this rain goes away ). Also my processing is improving thanks to Atalas - member of IIS and he has his own website with tutorials on Photoshop processing at http://www.atalas.net/index.php?opti...xpose&Itemid=4 My old and newer photo attached. Hope this helps.

http://i1255.photobucket.com/albums/...1107/Orion.jpg http://i1255.photobucket.com/albums/...Processed3.jpg

[rainwatcher (Peter)]

Thanks everyone for the replies.
All my previous work was done with film cameras on a F4.6 newt which of course captures the stuff that IR filters on DSLR's block. I must admit I prefer my film stuff for nebulae, and not just because you get the red, but its just too difficult to process correctly and quickly.
As for Photoshop, the cost is prohibitive. I use DSS for stacking and Gimp for post processing.
I have been practicing polar aligning and tracking so hopefully soon I will be able to do extended exposures.
My other issue is dragging my gear in and out, its heavy and the mozzies are having a field day. I had an observatory set up in my backyard some years ago (Sunbury) and a Newt on a good solid pier till the neighbours Jacaranda grew to about 8 m and completely shielded all the South sky. Then the East and west were blocked by gum trees, so all I have from ground level is NNE to NNW. I am considering making another double story observatory at about roof height and simply operating the scope from my study. For me though it takes away some of the magic. I could of course just chop all the trees down, then I would miss the parrots - some people are never satisfied, insist on cake and eating
Any onwards and upwards (perhaps literally)
Thanks again.