Building an astro photo.

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

This thread is to show the progression of an astro-photo over a few nights (many hours) of image data capture and subsequent stacking.

Tonight's stack (captured last night) is five images of twenty minutes exposure each, with NO flats or darks subtracted yet.

Over the next couple of months, I will hopefully get some more clear nights with no moon, where I can capture more images of this region, and progressively add the data.

Once the signal-to-noise ratio starts to smooth out, I will also bring in the flats and darks, arriving at a final image of many hours of exposure.

M78 is a bright diffuse reflection nebula in the Orion region, roughly 1,600 light years away. Inside it, are two stars around magnitude 10 which both light up the cloud from within.

This image data was captured with a Skywatcher Black Diamond ED 120 APO Refracting telescope and an Orion Starshoot Pro CCD camera mounted on an EQ6 Pro mount. Images are captured in Light RAW 1x1 then converted to colour. RGB Color correction is taken from a white point.

Stay tuned...

Baz.
http://i48.tinypic.com/30958v4.jpg

[Catanonia]

mmm, interesting project thread :)

[Nighthound]

Great work once again Baz. This is a stubborn one but you've got a great start.

Last year I finally made some headway on it, my result is in my gallery below if you care to have a look. I used the 20D and Sky 90 combo.

McNeil's Nebula can be seen faintly in your image. Just to the right of the bright core are two stars very close together. The dim spot just above them is McNeil's Nebula. In Adam Block's 2004 high magnification image you can clearly see it but you have to rotate it 90 degrees counter clockwise to match up with yours.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040219.html

And more:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2004/mcneil/

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

Yours is very nice Steve. A bit wider than mine too. There's lots going on around M78.

Baz.

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

Here you go, so far I got 16 x 20 minute exposures stacked, 10 x 20 minute darks subtracted, 10 x 0.1 sec flats with 10x 0.1 sec flat-darks subtracted.

I think I will get a few more subs though and keep going with it. I had to reject over 2 hours worth of exposures due to all kinds of anomalies, but 16 is pretty satisfying so far.

Baz.

http://i49.tinypic.com/5cxhf4.jpg

[troypiggo]

Coming along nicely, Baz!