383L+ Great Orion Nebula M42

[Kaidan]

Hi,

Taken from "Piton Maïdo" (2200m), Réunion Island.

L (bin1) : 60 x 60s
RGB (bin2) : 3 x 10 x 60s
Total : 1h30

Setup :
ATIK 383L+ with Astronomik LRGB filters
TMB130SS with TS 3" corrector
Losmandy G11 Gemini II guided with ATIK Titan on AT65Q using ASCOM PulseGuiding

Processing :
DeepSkyStacker
PixInsight 1.7

[bwa]

Very nice capture!

bwa

[Lex]

Nice M42!
If you give it a longer L channel, the surrounding stars will come out brighter, that is the only thing missing in your beautiful picture

Best

Lex

[Kaidan]

Thanks for your comments.

I just made a few adjustements to color balance, saturation and extended the L range a bit.

[Lex]

Hi,

That's better, the last thing would be to proceed less heavier with the background stretch or background neutralisation.

I like your version!

best

[bwa]

Jeremy,

I do like your most recent version.  I like the redder color (my personal preference) although I'm not too sure what the actual color is;  I've shot M42/M43 probably ten times and the color is different each time  :<)

I also very much like the almost 3D impact of the last version.  I get the feeling there is real depth to the nebula.

Nice job!

bwa

[Kaidan]

Hi Lex : i made a background neutralization right after the RGB combination. The area around M42 is very rich and i don't think it's really "dark" (at least, it's not when you add a strong Ha signal). A last background neutralization after processing give a greenish tone to the picture, not very beautiful.

Hi bwa : i used PixInsight color calibration and made the full processing twice, got both time the same colors. I did not play much with colors, no shift or big curves modifications, only played with saturation and the NGC1977 colors seem to be pretty accurate but i must agree that i don't know yet how to get accurate colors each time : i did not yet calibrate the RGB filters on a G2V ... and Regim do not work great on nebulaes.

Last processing, corrected the dark halos around the bright stars you might have notice in the two previous pictures (the two previous was the same processing but different color calibration : in the first one, i forgot to do background neutralization before color calibration which lead to purple colors) because of one of the HDR process i used without right protection of the stars...

[bwa]

Time to frame it and place on wall!

bwa