Imaged M42, the ever popular Orion nebula, in OSC RGB on the night of March 4, 2022. HDR composite of subs at 1 second exposure to capture the Trapezium stars and 120 second exposures for the nebulocity.
Another trial run of a new imaging setup with my trusty C8 for higher magnification deep sky imaging of galaxies this spring. Overall the new setup is working pretty well with the most significant problem being a loss of about 1/3 of my subs due to star training. So, not a lot of data here. I grabbed some narrowband data another night that I still have to process and will use to augment this RGB data.
Imaged with Celestron 8" SCT at F6.3 (1290 mm focal length) using a Celestron focal reducer/field flattener, IDAS NGS1 light pollution filter, and full spectrum modified Nikon D5300. Total integration time of ~1 hours (34 subs at ISO200 x 120 sec, 17 subs at ISO200 x 1s).
Pre/post-processing in PixInsight. Images calibrated using Weighted Batch Pre-Processing (BPP) script using darks, flats, and flat darks . Registered and stacked using StarAlighment and Integration processes. Initial post-processing steps included: cropping and gradient removal with ABE. Generated HDR image using HDR composition process. Additional post-processing included: noise reduction using MLT, photmetric color calibration, SCNR, stretch using Generalzied Hyperbolic Stretch, and HDR transformation. Additional noise reduction using Topaz Denoise AI.
For those who haven't tried it, I highly recommend giving Generalized Hypoerbolic Stretch (GHS) a try in Pixinsight. A great tool for dialing in your stretches. See:
https://ghsastro.co.uk/
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