[AZ-Observing] Re: Taking a different look at Orion

  • From: Alan Strauss <alan7170@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2013 16:17:28 +0000 (UTC)

That's a really beautiful image Mike- Thanks for sharing! 

Alan 





----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Wiles" <mikewilesaz@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 9:53:31 PM 
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Taking a different look at Orion 

Back in mid-December I suddenly found myself at home for a few days kicking 
it with my teenage daughter Mikayla and helping to nurse her back to 100% 
awesome status after having surgery to evict her tonsils. She'd remarked a 
few days before that her favorite object that I've ever imaged was the 
Orion Nebula. Since I had the downtime, I thought to myself...I should take 
that image and try to put a little twist on it for her. After just a few 
hours of time on it I realized that I had the start of a really nice image 
and that I should invest the time to really do it right. This is the result 
of that effort. 
So I realize I'm not the first person to shoot M42 in the Hubble Palette. 
It's just not as common as some other objects. It's a great narrowband 
target, so the only thing I can figure is that we're just so accustomed to 
it's natural LRGB look that the narrowband just doesn't look 'right'. I was 
very much surprised at how much SII signal there was in the data. Unlike 
most narrowband images, the SII signal was really strong. 

Mike 

*M42 - Hubble Palette* 
*Dates:* December 17th, 2012 through January 4th, 2013 
*Location:* Goodyear, Arizona 
*Telescope:* Explore Scientific ED127CF Refractor - 127mm f/7.5 Carbon 
Fiber Triplet 
*Mount:* Astro-Physics AP900GTO CP3 
*Camera:* SBIG ST-8300m and SBIG FW8-8300 filter wheel 
*Guiding:* SBIG ST-i Mono and SBIG OAG-8300 off-axis guider 
*Exposure:* 19.1 hours - 3nm filters, subs of 30s, 180s and 1800s 
*Capture:* CCD AutoPilot v5, Maxim DL 5.18 
*Calibration & Processing:* PixInsight 1.7 

The image can be found at Astrobin: M42 Hubble Palette - 
ED127CF<http://www.astrobin.com/full/29408/?mod=none> 
While I was processing, I also tried creating a synthetic LRGB image from 
the narrowband data. It's interesting to see how close to natural colors 
can be done if the channels are mixed well. It's certainly not going to 
fool anyone that it's a visible light broadband image, but it's not 
terribly far off either. The star colors of course are a dead giveaway. I 
created the image by mixing the channels as: 

Red: 75% Ha + 25% SII 
Green: 50% SII + 50% OIII 
Blue: 70% OIII + 30% Ha 

This image is at: http://www.astrobin.com/full/29408/B/? 

Your comments and criticisms are welcomed. 
Thanks, 

Mike 


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