Colorado, November 2009

M31 First Try

Here is a stack of a number of exposures for my first try at M31. Not very good, but at least the mount performance was pretty good. I hope to try a lot more exposures for my next attempt.

M33 WideField

The Traiangulum Galaxy (M33) using the 200mm zoom. A center crop of the shot. Not a bad attempt for only ~45 mins of total exposure. I'd like to come back to this with more time on target and maybe at some point more magnification.

M33 - PixInsight Reprocess

reprocess of wide field M33 using PixInsight really made a difference in the results. Even though this is the same set of raw images that was used in the first image the results are strikingly different. I may have learned some new techniques but I think PI also made a big difference.

The Pleiades (M45)

This had to wait until my post processing skills and software had both improved to be processed.

M42 - First Small Stack

The last thing I shot was the Orion nebula (M42). This is the very first crude post processing of just a small 5 image stack, heavily cropped to try to get some enlargement. A friend did some adjustments in Photoshop to bring out some color and reduce the background. I am hopeful that I can get an even more impressive result after i run a few larger stacks. What a magnificent object though! It is easy to see why this is one of the most photographed objects out there!

M42 - Reprocessed

I ran all of the frames from this original imaging session of M42 through PixInsight, and also reoriented the image into a more conventional orientation. This result has more balanced color plus lots more detail in both M42 and the Running Man Nebula above it (which is just barely visible in the original image.)