alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Last night I took the R6 out with a 400mm f5.6 L mounted on a iOptron StarGuider Pro and took 16- 10 sec subs and aligned and combined them in Nebulosity. Then processed them to the best of my ability. The final result was a pretty decent background sky. On the computer it looked great, but when I looked at it on my cellphone, it looked pretty crappy. Just wondering what might have caused that.

(Download)

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

I've seen M42 hundreds of times and yours looks good. Stars nice and round out to the edge.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Thanks, but my stars all have halos around them which I don't know how to correct this.
Does the background sky look uniformly dark or is it mottled?

J-SPEIGHT Loc: Akron, Ohio

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Good shot. You kept from blowing out the center of the nebula. I expect a few more subs would help reduce any noise.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

What causes the halos around the stars, nit enough subs or processing?

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi alberio
I've seen effect in a couple of cases.
Usually I seen this when I've over processes the image with deconvolution and or sharping, particularly the deringing settings.
I have also seen star halos during stacking if some of the subs added in are not in clear focus or have bloated stars.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

The star halos may be the result of a bit of haze in the atmosphere. Fairly hard to eliminate them other than selecting each star and processing them separately but you can reduce their brightness.

As for the background, this whole region is a huge hydrogen cloud of various densities, so it is truly 'mottled'. You might try brightening up the image a bit more to see what the background really looks like?

When I look at images of M42 I always note whether the bright portion around the Trapezium is defined or blown out. Yours looks pretty nice.

I downloaded your image and played with it a bit in Lightroom/Photoshop, in particular using the Astro Panel 6.0 Extension to Photoshop. I was working with your JPG image. One could do a whole lot better starting from 16 bit image, i.e., TIF or PNG.

A lot of astrophotographers like a dark star field. I prefer a brighter star field to pick up background nebulosity and other stellar objects one might miss in a dark background. Personal choice.

Some people don't like people playing with their images. I apologize in advance...

Clear skies!

bwa

Alberio M42 reworked slightly in Photoshop, Astro Panel 6.0 & Lightroom

(Download)

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Thanks, I'll experiment some more.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

In processing increase the # of rejects

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Thanks bwana,
I was concentrating on keeping the trapezium under exposed. I shot 16 subs in RAW @10sec each hoping to bring out the faint nebulosity and not blow out the center.
Your rendition was what mine looked like after processing in Nebulosity and Topaz. I just increased the blacks to cover up the mottled sky which made the sky a bit too black.
As for you making adjustments to my shots, I have no problem with anyone doing that as these are ones I post to learn what I can do better to get the keeper. Thanks again, Charlie

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

I appreciate your suggestions. All subs seemed to be pretty close to focus, but maybe @200 ISO and 10 sec, each needed less exposure time and more subs like you mentioned. It's either that or my processing technique.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

As in stacking?

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

Astrophotography is not for the faint of heart.i have an 11 inch in a ROR observatory and have the equipment but not the energy. I'll try BIF now eagles are nesting

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Astrophotography is a bit like golf, some good days, some not so good. I gave up on golf! Still trying to improve my astro-imaging after close to 50 years of practice...

bwa