Yes, another M42, it is this time of year....

[fmeireso]

Another M42, must say a bit less colorfull then Stefans approach.

It was a troubelsome evening. I put the rig a bit more north in my little garden, just enough to get me into trouble....Not used to this specific place i could not polar align, because i could not adjust the mount in alt az, i ran out of travel...I had to adjust it 3 times, and boy , it is a heavy thing to move, even only slight...
Eventually it got it right, but then the Sharpcap polar align routine, had issues....guess i just change some setting by accident until eventually i got it right, well more or less, but it reported 'good' so that was fine.
With all that struggling i lost alot of time, in freezing temps...well, that is ap life....

The rest went well, slewing, platesolving and focusssing,no problem. But oh the moon, shinning too much for my liking.
The next day, new trouble. I discovered i had a wrong setting in APT, treating the cam as a mono cam...i totally forgot about that because i had used the mono cam on my last 3 sessions, so i winded up with mono images, well at least i thought so....PI refused to debayer, cause the FITS lacked the debayer setting . I could not understand it until i found the solution, which was quite easy. Since PI had an AUTO setting for debayering, looking for info in the FITS file that infor was not there, but change that setting to RGGB solved it. Indeed after all, the color capture, is a color capture....

Picture is fully ST with as usual a couple of little tweaks in GIMP.
Scope was a 130 mm at F/7 with FR brought to F 5.6 only 2h38 min because unpredicted clouds rolled it about 23:00 hr in the evening...i could not see them on SAT24...pffff...

I find the picture not bad, but it lacks a bit of punch...but since i used a astro cam, it sure shows the red HA alot better. I also used aL-enhance, since there was moonlight and processed as HOO

M42Gimp (Large).jpg (275.33 KiB) Viewed 3231 times

[Mike in Rancho]

Glad you got out and had some fun, Freddy, and nice result. Good job troubleshooting the debayering issue too.

I'm generally not a huge fan of HOO for things like Orion or the Horsehead, but the moon is what it is. Processing has improved quite a bit I think too. In the past you might have "shattered" the image with HDR module.

Some of the stars have some ringing or artifacting, not sure if that's from stacking or post. Also some spongy graininess again. No attempt at star removal for this? It could just be lower SNR too, maybe in the OIII side of the L-eNhance and as you said - moon.

[fmeireso]

No Mike, no starremoval whatsovever. Everything stayed at Startools.

Sure tried in PI too but the outcome was, well not just as good...

I used HOO because i had placed the L-enhance filter. In fact i find it better on M42 too use no filter at all, but since the moon was shinning very bright i installed it anyway...
Guess tomorrow i will try a more simple processing but i don't expect it to be better. Also the session was interuppted by clouds coming in, a rather unforseen thing.
Ah well, at least i had some fun, despite the trouble...and in fact the problems were not very big, just had to overcome it. Those things happen.

[Stefan B]

Hi Freddy,

looks very good in my eyes given the conditions. I also can't see a big deal of mottling although the screen I am working with currently basically hides most of the shadows so...

In terms of color I think it is really well handled given that it's duoband. The color in my image mainly comes from the brown dust and the blue stars' glow which probably is due to thin clouds and a layer of ice above the mirror So don't take it as a reference. I probably would have tried to give more saturation to the red. But anyway it's a fine image.

Regards
Stefan

[fmeireso]

Thanks Stefan,

Yes i also find the the red should have more punch. Can't see much mottling either, i did not use starnet nor separated the stars from the nebulae.

Off course 2h38 is not much integration either , certainly not with a shiny moon in the sky..

I just made a hybrid, in wich i like the coloring more. It is half done in ST and half done in PI. Not HOO, took the stack just as it came from the cam.
I am considering to put it on astrobin, but i will decide that a bit lateron.