Yet another Orion shot :P

I got the Vista Starstepper up and running, and I also borrowed a nice Canon remote from a coworker of mine. Finally got everything to work out tonight. These were 20 4 minute exposures for a total of 80 minutes, 55mm, f/5.6 800 ISO. I am clamping the poor starstepper to an old TV stand, and so alignment was through trial and error for about 45 minutes. Still had some drift, but not too bad. I didn't feel as though it was focused as sharp either, but I've been struggling with that as well. In any case, this is the best I've done so far. I can not only see the Orion nebula, but also the running man, the Flame, and the Horsehead as well. I can even see a little bit of Barnard's loop starting to peek through at the top of the original stack. I tweaked it a bit, but I just don't know how to make it shine to its full potential yet. Enjoy!

Excellent widefield. I'll be giving this a go some time.

Nice widefield. At 80 minutes total I would have expected a bit more background nebulosity, How are you stacking and processing?

That's a lovely shot, framed really well and the nebulosity is peeking through. Bravo!

Chris, no darks or flats at all. I used DSS, and post-processed in PhotoStudio 5.5, a program that came with my S1 IS. I'm thinking I might grab a few dark frames, and I am going to try again in Gimp. This is a JPEG, and then moved to Photobucket, so I know I lost a little bit. Even in the original TIFF image, I can't see a lot of the nebulosity. I was shooting in JPEG and AWB.

Yeah I would probably not bother with darks or flats but may be tempted to shoot RAW for DSS.

I was just a little surprised that for an 80 minute total exposure that a little more of a hint of Barnards Loop was not showing through. I had a quick play in Photoshop and couldn't stretch it much more either.

I played with it in Gimp, and was able to squeak out a little bit more, but it just looks soooo noisy and not clear and crisp like other images I see here. I must say the learning curve is quite steep. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights. LOL

If it was easy it would be no fun at all. Astro images are amongst the most challenging to post process. Your second image shows the loop and the nebulsity that hangs around Zetoa Orionis (Alnitak). There is also a lot of other faint stuff so somewhere between your two images is probably about right.

I feel like a broken record for sure now. I played with and became much more familiar with what DSS can do for processing. I also looked closely at my images, and discovered that only about 8 were truly useable. My prof said the gears could lag on the stepper, and they did in over half the shots. So, I was left with just a little bit. I rotated the image 90 degrees, but this by far is my favorite. Thanks for being so patient with my excitement!!

Very nice Elizabeth ! Your last attempt looks great !

It often amazes me what the sensor picks up, but which you can't tell until you have a good fiddle. That last image does look excellent. You've managed to bring out a lot of the "hidden" nebulosity, but still kept Orion itself as the main subject. Whenever I muck around with the levels in order to try and bring forward the wispyness of the nebula clouds, I usually find the stars in my image all end up looking the same, so the constellations themselves all but disappear.

I've got SO much to learn though...you're doing really well, and that Star Stepper is proving to be great. Well done for persevering with it.

last image is fantastic , even got Bernards Loop starting to show , no mean feat that,well done

Looking great Elizabeth. Great to see you getting out under the stars. Keep 'em coming.

Adrena1in, I messed with the RBG values in DSS and got them to overlap on the left, halfway from the middle. I then increased my saturation shift to about 10-15. I messed with the luminescence values until I had a straight line through the RBG values. I saved it under these settings and then changed curve values in Gimp until I was able to wheedle out a few more colors in the loop. Can't wait to try it again, that's for sure!

The thing that has bothered me about these images is that there seems to be a ghost of the belt above and slightly to the right of the actual belt. It's in all the single shots as well. What is it?

drevilsmom wrote in post #7362654
The thing that has bothered me about these images is that there seems to be a ghost of the belt above and slightly to the right of the actual belt. It's in all the single shots as well. What is it?

Not sure I can see what you mean. Are all the brightstars "ghosting", or just the belt? I've suffered from internal relections before, causing a similar phenomenon, most noticeable on really bright stars, but it happens with every star in the image if that probably appears. If you're just seeing the "ghosting" on the stars in the belt then I'm guessing it's just more dim stars out there.