M42 The Great Orion Nebula

The Great Orion Nebula has always been a firm favourite to view visually or to image. I was lucky enough to view the trapezium through the clubs 20 reflector. A beautiful sight in a quality eyepiece. I also had some fun imaging it too. Not a very favorably placed object for my backyard with the fence and a number of electricity cables stretching across from  The South to the North East. So an imaging run consist of a lot of rejected frames with wires.

I created a starless image to process the nebula, looks quite nice

The we have the Running Man Nebula

M42 The Orion Nebula

A last look at the Great Orion Nebula for a few months. Unfortunately for me it disappears behind the front of the house about an hour past the meridian so a very limited window of capture now in March.

Anyway a short capture of 20 x 180 and 20 x 30 seconds images taken with the ASI294mc pro on the ED100 via the ASI AIR Pro.  Calibrated and stacked in Deep sky stacker and processed in Photoshop. I am always amazed how smooth the result is and even with a huge crop on the Trapezium the resulting image is incredibly clean. One confession to make though for the pixel peepers, the 4 stars of the Trapezium have been made round removing slight halos from processing.

First post for a long while, Last one of the year.

Due to illness this has been my first post for a few months now. It was great to go out to my observatory and dust off the cobwebs and roll back the roof. I am lucky in that once I have powered & set up approx 10 minutes I can then control all my imaging from the comfort of inside the house. No more endless hours in the cold. Through the 35 years or so I have been an astronomer I feel i have earned & done my time in the cold. I was surprised that everything was working well. I decided an easy target to get me back into the swing. Due to the moon's presence I limited the exposures to 5 minutes. A total of 2 hours 20 minutes has given me this result. I also took a number of 10 second exposures, so the final result was not to over expose the core. Taken through the William Optics GT81. No calibration frames used. Just processed in Photoshop. I hope to return with longer exposures to capture the outer shell of gas. Looking forward to posting pics of Comet Lovejoy too soon.

Flat field issues solved

I am still in the early stages of getting used to the new set up. With the old system I attatched the field flattener and DSLR and the correct ccd to lens distance was achieved instantly giving full flat frames. The same applied to the FLT110 and the DSLR good round stars to the edge of the field but with the Starlight express camera elongation of the edge of frame stars was noticable. I downloaded CCD inspector to examine the field.

As you can see a clear problem. I didnt have any m48 spacers, thankfully Andrew ( a fellow blogger and member of BAS) has lent me some. A few combinations later and 35mm worth of spacing has produced a much more pleasing result. Good focus and FWHM figures from centre to edge.

 

 This process was done late evening after returning from the observatory at Great Ellingham. I wanted to give it a test run on a subject until the rise of the comets. I ended with a nice result from 12 x 10 minute exposures on the enigmatic M42. A DDP stretch and saturation gave a good sharp result with lovely structure to the wisps of nebolosity. Guiding was sub pixel accurate.

M42

The last week or so has left us all a bit battered by the winds.
The moons phase equally annoying for a deep sky imager. I wanted to just test everything was still working as it has been over a month since rolling back the dome roof. Last year I was able to test my UHC filter on ngc7000 on a series with and without. So last night I pointed towards Orion and done a series of 3 minute images at Iso 800. I love the colour rendition that the filter gives. A more natural look from unfiltered. M42  I think. Just wish we were a few light years closer!!!!!!!

M42 & NGC1977 Over Processed

This image is the same as the one below but i used some very aggressive processing using images plus 2.5. I have done this to see what info I could tease out from the stacked master image. Personally I like to keep the images clean with realistic dark backgrounds so if anything I am happy to under process to get a more pleasing result. I am certainly no expert in imaging but I enjoy the challenge of having a go.

So what did I do.

well within images plus there is a video file with a set of typical preset adjustments for a M42 found in the file named "deep sky image set" you can copy and paste these settings upon your own image , the processes include Pixel Maths, Digital Development, Brightness & levels, Saturation & brightness.

I wouldnt be happy with this as a final result but what amazes me is that the information is there. I love the way the running man leaps from his own nebula and M42,s wings completely encirle and join hands. No colour adjustments were made & I love to see the true colours shine through.

Please your comments are welcomed what do you think

M42 The Great Orion Nebula

What an amazing night transparency excelent apart from the 62% moon in the way.

I thought I would have another go at M42. I wasnt happy with the previous posted image, well that was really just a test to get the PHD to work ( still no luck ). Apologies for slightly elongated stars.

Object: M42
Type: Reflection & Emission Nebula 1270 Light Years Distant.
Constellation: Orion
Date: 24th January 09
Equipment: William Optics Megrez 90 Canon EOS 40D
Subframes: 30 x 30 second exposures unguided at ISO800 and
Processed: 10 x 30 sec darks were captured & subtracted. Stacked using Deep Sky Stacker,
Processed in Images Plus 2.0 with a DDP stretch. 10 Iterations on a adaptive Richardson Lucy deconvolution filter.
Notes: This cropped Image was taken under a 62% illuminated moon.

Any exposure over 30 seconds was badly washed with moonlight so I kept it to that and the result is excellent. I also used Deep Sky Stacker programme for the calibration and stacking it was very easy to use and a great deal quicker than manual registration of each image. I used med fine quality JPEG as I have a small problem when I ask it to use RAW even with an empty card the camera says it is full and will not take an image.

M42 The Great Orion Nebula

Object: M42

Type: Reflection & Emission Nebula 1270 Light Years Distant.

Constellation: Orion

Date: 24th January 09
Equipment: William Optics Megrez 90 Canon EOS 40D
Subframes: 4 x 30 second exposures unguided at ISO800 and

Processed: No darks or flats were captured. Processed in Images Plus 2.0 with a Moderate non linear stretch or DDP. 5 Iterations on a adaptive Richardson Lucy deconvolution filter.

Notes: This cropped Image was taken under heavy light pollution of my neighbouring town of Watton in Norfolk. M42 is the brightest nebula in the night sky buried within Orions sword and is the closest region of star formation.

Back In Time: That means when we look up in the winter sky at the nebula- a star making factory, the light started towards us in the year 739AD... For those of you who are history buffs, that is roughly five years after the death of the Venerable Bede- the monk who wrote the first history of Britain- before the Vikings started plundering their way around Europe!