Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

Sadly, I have not been able post all too much as of lately, due to not having internet access at my new home. I am still able to read most of what has been posted on my phone.

During a test run/imaging session of my current project, to make sure all my equipment wants to play friendly together before moving it much farther away from the warmth of the house, which is a mosaic of NGC 2264 region and its surrounding dust clouds, just to the East of Orion. I was waiting for my current subject to come into view, from behind the wind break I decided to try a couple of exposures of M42.

Going off the top of my head it is 4 frames of RGB binned 2x2 each and 8 frames of Lum unbinned, all consisting of 600s guided on the AVX, used 15 frames of 10s to capture some of the inner detail in the core that was blown out when imaging for such long exposures. Equipment used was the W.O. 70mm ZenithStar ED refractor with the kaf-8300 8.3mp Kodac CCD cooled to -6.

Personally I think I overcooked this one, trying to pull out too much data with the limited amount of exposures I acquired. Calibrated and stacked in Pixinsight, did a bit of noise reduction and used Dynamic background extraction to eliminate any gradients not corrected by the flats.

Color balance, cropping and everything else was done in cs6.

(Download)


(Download)

SDB777 Loc: Edwards, AR USA

You sort of lost me right after you said, "Going off the top of my head it is 4 frames.....", but that doesn't keep me from enjoying the photo's!


Scott (very far out) B

Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

Correction the binned images were 120s duration, binned 2 x 2.

Thanks for looking and posting Scott. Since The camera I used is a monochrome CCD, so I must take separate images with Red, Blue and Green filters so I can combine them into a color image. It is common to also shoot Lum frames to accentuate the detail.

Thanks,
Matthew

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Overcooked? Hell, you gave me a flashback to the late 1960's/early 1970's.
Farm Out man! Take a trip and never leave the farm....
I can't wait to see what you do when everything is up and running again.
Funny, with the title I was having wondering of a hunter, a doe, and lewd acts in the forest... :shock:
:lol:

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

"What is overcooking?" I don't think there is an answer for that one when it comes to "up" photography.

Great job on your photos!

Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

I use it as an expression in which I took the processing a bit to far before I realised how saturated and crunchy the stars were looking especially considering I went from a 64bit xisf file, witch is pixinsight's version of .FITS, but on steroids.

Hoping to continue imaging tonight but the truck is saying its -23. Since I refuse to get out of the truck, I will have to take its word for it. Thankfully the wind really started blowing so we couldn't even acclimate ourselves to the cold. Oh well might just have to call it due to lack of productivity. LMFAO

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

WoW, minus 23! I am a little bummed out because it is 45 in Spartanburg and drizzling. But the sun is promised for tomorrow afternoon and over the next few days the skies are looking pretty decent with lows in the plus 20's...... I can dress for that. I will not complain! Geeeeze Louise, minus 23 - that is unbearable.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

When we lived in Wyoming, January and sub-zero temperatures were the norm.
The very worst I ever saw was -60 with gusts to 60 MPH.
It was so off the wind chill chart it had to be calculated.
-108 degrees F. wind chill factor. Everything was shut down but us electricians on swing shift. We had some inside work our boss put us on so we'd stand in front of salamander heaters for 50 minutes, and work for 10... maybe. The diesel fuel gelled in the mining equipment and completely shut down the rest. We were at 6300 feet elevation.

When the blizzards broke and the sun came out, we went "hood draggin" behind the 4X4's. Hop on an upside down car hood and go for a slide over the snow. We were playing in T-shirts. And it was 0 degrees.

Something that amazed me was once I nicked a finger. It was a good-n-deep cut. It didn't bleed. It oozed. Yep, I guess your blood does get thick.

Wyoming was a very interesting 7 years in my life. And I haven't been cold since I moved back. I can completely understand not wanting to make the run from the truck to the house.

Albuqshutterbug Loc: Albuquerque NM

When I first looked at this I thought it was the heart nebula. Looking at the second shot there's a lot of detail pulled out. Both of them are quite interesting. :thumbup:

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

Yea, personally I love the B&W Running Man section.

Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

Thanks guys, if it wasn't for the stupid diffraction spikes in my other M42 I could rescale my other attempts to add all the data together.

I have yet to really shoot the Heart and Soul nebulae. I might use that target for the first light on my D5100 I just got back together after stripping off the cut filter. Just have to make the AC/DC converter to ditch the need for batteries.

Sadly Sonny, the safety Nazis don't allow us to have fun like that. The most we have done was to use our crane hooked to the lanyard of a harness and swing around 120' off the ground.
Matthew