The Flaming Star Nebula (IC405) is a relatively bright nebula in the constellation Auriga with both emission and reflection elements. It is estimated to be approximately 1,500 light years from Earth. This image uses a modified SHO palette in narrowband to represent the nebula, with extra RGB data collection to represent the stars in natural light. It is a first light image for a newly acquired QHY268M camera. Equipment: QHY268M Camera @ -5C and Gain:56 Offset:25 Software Bisque MyT Mount Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8 Antlia Pro Filters (3nm narrowband plus LRGB) Askar FMA180 Guidescope/ASI290MM Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8 Lightroom CC Photoshop CC N.I.N.A. Control Software Star XTerminator (Russell Croman) Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman) Light Frames: Ha - 56 x 480 secs ( 7 hrs 28 mins) OIII - 78 x 480 secs (10 hrs 48 mins) SII - 81 x 480 secs (10 hrs and 18 mins) Red: 28 x 30 secs 14 mins) Green: 27 x 30 secs (13 mins 30 secs) Blue: 28 x 30 secs (14 mins) 29 hrs 21 mins 30 secs total Dark Frames: 10 x 30 secs (5 mins) 10 x 480 secs (1 hr 20 mins) Bias Frames 60 No Flat Frames
The sun peeks out through mist and clouds right at sunrise. Taken from our Many Glacier Hotel 3rd floor balcony!
M42 at Prime Focus Went back and tried again for M42, this time using a Meade 8" SCT as my 'camera lens'. This shot is an HDR composite made from 3 individual 'stacks' of shots (processed using DeepSkyStacker), then post processed in Photoshop CS4 and then Photomatix, to try to mitigate the very high dynamic range of M42 4 x 6 min @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 21 x 3 min @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 5 x 1 min @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 8 x 20 sec @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 11 x 10 sec @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer There was additional post processing applied using Irfanview and Photoshop CS4 to the final HDR output. I am still learning about the post processing tricks, having gotten a lot of help form some friends on various forums. I may update this image in the future if I get another version I like more, but this one is not too bad for a beginner like me :o)
