Contains:  Extremely wide field
Orion Rising, Maxime Oudoux
Orion Rising, Maxime Oudoux

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

The Sunrise of Orion ✨ 🌌

⚠ Warning: this image uses the composite technique, according to certain precise rules; see the details at the bottom of the text, everything is explained ! 🙂

Imagine being able to observe winter nebulae with the naked eye: this is what you would see in the Orion constellation ! This area of ​​the sky concentrates a number of them.

On the ground, we find a friend of mine, Jean-françois Gely, on "our" little rock which caught our eye during the day. I actually had THIS photo composition in mind as soon as I saw it aligned with Mont Viso on the horizon!

Jean-François and Mont Viso allow you to give yourself a size scale for objects in the sky: they are huge! An idea, Jean-François was about 25m from me, Mont Viso at +/- 10km.

The mountains were lit by a 3-day-old young moon about to set, skimming the horizon (hence the shadows on the slopes on our side).

Side image processing, it was an obstacle course for the sky. We don't see it here, but the image comes back from far, far away! The shooting conditions were not good, there was a lot of humidity.

I had to learn new software to "save" this image project, in this case the excellent AstroPixel Processor (APP). Where my usual software (DxO Photolab, AutoPano Giga) had great difficulty in offering a clean result, APP has the enormous advantage of being able to process AND assemble the mosaic "at the same time".

A lot of time has been spent on it, I think between 20 and 30 hours of learning and iterative testing. The software is particularly slow to give its results, including on one of my new computers (a workstation with a muscular configuration). All you have to do is make a mistake when you start assembling the images, wait several hours, to realize that in the end ... it was not a good idea. By dint of trial and perseverance, we get there!

A BIG thank you to David Malattia from our NOX Collective for introducing me to this software, it is really fantastic.

Nikon D750 Astrodon

Samyang 135mm f / 2 ED UMC

NiSi Natural Night Filter

Panoramic head Nodal Ninja VI RD-16 II

SLIK 700 PRO BH6 tripod

Ground :

no additional material

13s, f / 2.8, 2500ISO, 135mm

panoramic 2x5 images (the camera is in portrait on the head)

RAW processing on DxO Photolab 3

Assembly on AutoPano Giga

Sky:

Astrotrac TT320X AG mount

180s, f / 2.8, 1600ISO, 135mm

Panoramic of approximately 25 images (tilted according to the axis of rotation of the Earth, the device is "at an angle")

No stacking, only unique poses for each area of ​​the sky! There are DOFs on the other hand (the Nikon in the freezer ... I had not done any there)

Processing and assembly on AstroPixel Processor

Processing and final touch-ups in Photoshop CC

Image processed on Eizo CS2420 monitor (calibrated)

Details on the composite image:

In the interests of transparency and ethics with you, here are the shooting conditions. Even if it is not a real photograph (everything is taken at once), it comes very close to reality. I impose strict rules on myself so as not to post anything and thus deceive Internet users by showing you something impossible (Magellan Clouds over Dolomites... true and sad story).

- Respect of object scales: YES, everything is at 135mm focal length. Particular care has been taken to reproduce the sky correctly compared to Mont Viso and Jean-François

- Respect for the place and date of the shooting: YES, everything was taken from the same place, the same night, in a period of less than 3 hours (remember that a pano cannot be taken by snapping your fingers, inevitably a tracked pano)

- Respect of ground / sky alignments: YES, this scene is reproducible in reality. Once again, special care has been taken to reproduce the position of the sky at this height close to the horizon, thanks to various software and from my memories having gone there.

- Respect for the nocturnal atmosphere: YES, the mist of humidity on the distant terrestrial landscape is there as well as the light pollution on the Italian side (use of the images of the mountains to have a base of hue and luminosity to reproduce ... c was a hassle to do)

- Exposure time for the ground and the sky: 13s for the ground, 180s for the sky (single exposure). There is no big difference.

- Time difference between shooting the ground and the sky: about 1 hour (the time that the moon passes below the horizon to start shooting the sky)

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Orion Rising, Maxime Oudoux