M42 - The Orion Nebula (MIke Jensen)

M42 - The Orion Nebula

Revision title: M42 - The Orion Nebula

Imaged in narrowband, processed in PixInsight (Using BlurXT, StarsXT), Photoshop and Topaz DeNoise. This was a BIG experiment for me. I shot much of this around the full moon. Because of the configuration of my yard and surrounding property I was able to image from around 9pm – 2am nightly. At first I thought what I was going to need to do was do some sort of an HDR image to keep the core from being blown out. So, I shot a bunch of 30 second exposures and a bunch of 10 second exposures. I ended up only using the 30 second images. When it came time to process I ran each filter through the Sub Frame Selector tool in PI. This helps to grade the frames, keep the good, toss the bad. For this image I ended up with:

306 Ha
339 Oii
343 Sulphur

Total Subs: 988I put the subs through the WBPP tool and got my master subs. I did a few things here, ran the BlurXT on it, later I ran the StarXT on it to separate the stars from the nebula. That way I could really work on the nebula. In combining the masters I tried a variety of approaches. The standard SHO (Hubble Pallet) was rather boring to me. I also tried SOH and didn’t really care for that. I then ran HOS and really liked the colors on that. So I used HOS as my base image. I saved out each master as a stretched tiff file to help with added texture when working in Photoshop. The Photoshop file is 14 layers. I then rant through Topaz DeNoise to soften it up a bit. I did a bit of the same process on the 10second images and found that 30 secs was the sweet spot. When you take a LOT of 30 second images you get those outer bands of nebulosity floating out there. So, I mentioned an experiment. The big part was doing a bit of hybrid processing in both PI and PS to get the result I wanted. I’m excited about doing more processing this way, and I’m learning a ton about PI now.

Original
Final
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Title: M42 - The Orion Nebula

Description: Imaged in narrowband, processed in PixInsight (Using BlurXT, StarsXT), Photoshop and Topaz DeNoise. This was a BIG experiment for me. I shot much of this around the full moon. Because of the configuration of my yard and surrounding property I was able to image from around 9pm – 2am nightly. At first I thought what I was going to need to do was do some sort of an HDR image to keep the core from being blown out. So, I shot a bunch of 30 second exposures and a bunch of 10 second exposures. I ended up only using the 30 second images. When it came time to process I ran each filter through the Sub Frame Selector tool in PI. This helps to grade the frames, keep the good, toss the bad. For this image I ended up with:
306 Ha
339 Oii
343 Sulphur

Total Subs: 988I put the subs through the WBPP tool and got my master subs. I did a few things here, ran the BlurXT on it, later I ran the StarXT on it to separate the stars from the nebula. That way I could really work on the nebula. In combining the masters I tried a variety of approaches. The standard SHO (Hubble Pallet) was rather boring to me. I also tried SOH and didn’t really care for that. I then ran HOS and really liked the colors on that. So I used HOS as my base image. I saved out each master as a stretched tiff file to help with added texture when working in Photoshop. The Photoshop file is 14 layers. I then rant through Topaz DeNoise to soften it up a bit. I did a bit of the same process on the 10second images and found that 30 secs was the sweet spot. When you take a LOT of 30 second images you get those outer bands of nebulosity floating out there. So, I mentioned an experiment. The big part was doing a bit of hybrid processing in both PI and PS to get the result I wanted. I’m excited about doing more processing this way, and I’m learning a ton about PI now.

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Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

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Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
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