M42 (The Orion Nebula) (Eric Solís)

M42 (The Orion Nebula)

A multi-night effort on The Orion Nebula (M42) and The Running Man Nebula (NGC1977) in LHaRGB.

This object seemed like it would be easy when I was initially getting started because it's so bright in the core. However, it took a lot of effort and various exposure lengths to bring out the beautiful faint nebulosity and detail that are present in the object but differ widely in brightness compared to the extremely bright core. The final product was greatly enhanced by adding an extra night of data from longer 5 minute Ha subs.

PixInsights awesome HDR tools were used extensively to combine data from different exposures and to compress the dynamic range to produce a HDR final image. I also combined data from a HDR composition of the Ha data into both the luminance layer and the red channel. I did a bit of noise reduction on the fainter regions of the image, but overall the data was pretty clean. I can't decide if the final product is too red, but I think I'm happy with it for now.

As a final note, it was exceptionally cold every night I imaged! The temperature averaged less than -15 C, which added a personal challenge to the process, but I'm happy I persevered!

C

Description: Added data from about 2 hours of 5 minute Ha subs to enhance both the RGB and luminance layers

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Used HDR multi-scale transformation 3x (instead of 1x in the previous revision) to bring out more contrast in the bright core and fainter Ha clouds.

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E

Description: Clipped the darks to increase contrast, and made some adjustments to the color saturation

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F

Description: Reprocessed focusing on the HDR composition, since the detail around the core and Trapezium stars was not done well in my previous attempts. Enhanced R with Ha data, but have not enhanced the Lum with Ha yet (another revision to come with Lum enhanced with Ha).

Uploaded: ...

G

Description: A more neutral version of F, I can't decide how much red I want in the outer nebulosity but I think this looks more natural overall.

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H

Description: Enhanced luminance with Ha data before HDR MST, then and used this synthetic luminance image in an LRGB combination with a HaRGB HDR image. I like the enhanced contrast with some of the dark regions in the background nebulosity in this version.

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I

Description: First attempt at using multi-scale processing

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J

Description: First upload of the multi-scale processed image was too dark, this one is brighter

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K

Description: I like the colors and detail in this version of the multi-scale processing more

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ZWO ASI1600MM/QHY163M
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	DCW9I041J02PVPKL586E2N8MKIC6YPAR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h35m04s.69
RA (top/left)	05h33m06s.43
RA (top/right)	05h33m19s.70
RA (bottom/right)	05h37m02s.63
RA (bottom/left)	05h36m49s.87

Dec (center)	-05°15′46″.4
Dec (top/left)	-05°52′22″.9
Dec (top/right)	-04°36′51″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	-04°39′11″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	-05°54′42″.0

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