Following on from my efforts earlier in the year of the Orion Constellation
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-436941-1.html, I had to give this photograph another go.
This time I selected my Nikon 105mm F2.8 Micro instead of the 50mm.
Upon the 105mm I placed my recently purchased Hoya Red Intensifier.
Settings & Equipment:
Nikon D90 (unmodified)
Nikon 105mm F2.8 with Red Intensifier filter
ISO 800
F3.0
400 light frames @ 45 s
200 dark frames (same settings as above)
Tracked not guided on the Sky watcher Star Adventurer.
Processing:
Clarkson ARC calibration to light frames (Lens profile, CA correction, black point setting & a slight luminance noise adjustment)
The lights & darks were then taken to Sequator for stacking, (auto brightness, LP uneven, enhance star colour 50%)
The stacked Tiff file was then taken to CS6.
In CS6 I adopted some of Clarkson's recommendations, mixed with my own adjustments to curves & levels.
During the million or so micro incremental adjustments I used an anchored curve stretch. This type of stretch retained the star colour, avoided star bloating & clipping to the high channels, but raised the mid & lower channels.
Once I was happy with the curve & level stretches I applied a luminance layer constructed from the RGB file as follows:
Duplicate image, desaturate, lower white level slightly in curves, image set to luminance & merge down.
The final adjustments to the final photograph were performed using Carboni actions (Local Enhancement, increase star colour, make stars smaller & deep space noise removal)
So here we are with my second take of the Orion Constellation.