DSOing again

[Lester]

Hi all,

its been nearly a year since my last DSO image, so I am glad to be up and running again.

This image is 3 x 20 minutes with 40D Astro, 50mm lens at f4 and iso 1250.

I wanted to get 10 images, but clouds came in.

This image shows just how faint the Witch Head nebula is compared to the Horse Head and even Barnard's Loop.

I have reduced the red a heap, let me know it its still too red for your liking.

[Lester]

Sorry, that was way too red.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Nice shot , Lester. Your 2nd pic is the better one. But they're both good pics

[Tilt (Michael)]

Big subs at 20mins a pop.

Nice image, pity the clouds ruined the fun. Always another time to gather more data.

Michael

[Lester]

Thanks Norm and Michael.

I just need to brush up on the processing now.

[Ric]

Nice capture Lester, the loop really stands out nicely.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Glad to see you're back into it Lester. What's that interesting bit of nebulosity about halfway between Rigel and Mintaka; the only thing I can find in that area is IC420 and that is alot closer to M42.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I think it could be Sh2-278

[Lester]

Thanks Ric and Paul.

Paul, I think there is a reflection in that region, perhaps comming from Rigel. I am not familiar with Sh2-278.

[Hagar (Doug)]

Back on the Dark side. Good to see. Lots in the image Lester. Sizes are quite deceptive when you only see objects imaged on their own.
Hope you don't mind I just fiddled the background offset a little more. It really does show how huge an area of nebulosity the Orion complex is.
Nice one.

[Lester]

Thanks Doug. I think I have to do some playing around in DSS with the settings to get the colour better.

[Lester]

For some unknown reason to me I get better colour balance stacking tiffs than stacking raw images in DSS.

This is a tiff stack, without any colour adjustments and just some curves, no cropping.

The bottom left corner shows 2 more nebula with similar texture to the Witch Head.

I find it interesting looking at the brightness of the Horse Head compared to the Flame nebula. The HH appears brighter in the image and yet the Flame is much easier to see visually than the Horse Head.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Lester,

Beautiful!

I would have preferred the loop to be more towards the centre, but, that's a aesthetic.

Keep it up!

Regards,
Humayun

[Quark (Trevor)]

Nice image Lester,

Lots of things going on in this image, Barnard's Loop is nicely defined.
Is that some sort of artifact about halfway between Rigel and Mintaka, there seems to be quite a large blueish disk.

Regards
Trevor

[Lester]

Thanks Humayun and Trevor for your comments.

Yes Trevor I think its a reflection comming from Rigel.

Also Humayun, I could have centred the objects a bit better, but was so excited to be taking images of DSOs again, so just went for it as is.