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1 Attachment(s)
Deep in M42
This is an example of the type of narrowband images I normally do. The picture of M42 contains more than 40 hours of raw data – all unguided through a 10” F3.6 astrograph.
As we usually don’t have long periods of clear weather ACP Expert is a big help.
Hope you enjoy,
Kurt-Peter
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OHHHHH Amazing!! Unbelievable actually. Thanks for sharing!
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I've never figured out how to get all of that swirling detail in M42. I know how to control the brightness of the core, but the rest of it is an enigma.
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It is indeed an art. There are tools like Pixinsight, but like a paintbrush, it's all in how it's used. You can find workshops, videos, and all sorts of info on how to be a better astro-artist, on the web and at astronomy conferences. Check Warren Keller and Ron Brecher who put on Pixinsight workshops, as well as Adam Block who has a series of tutorials.
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There are three important points to get a chance to see these faint details:
1) exposure time
2) exposure time
3) patience
You need to get a REALLY good signal to noise ratio even with the faintest SII and OIII filters otherwise these details are not recorded.
Although this object is very bright the total exposure in Ha was 11 hrs, OIII 7 hrs and SII 6 hrs taken through an F3.6 telescope. The "rest" of the approx. 40 hrs was spent to LRGB.
Actually, it is an LRGBSHO picture with up to five different subexposures per filter - in total 673 (!) light frames - to get good HDR files in Pixinsight.
Combining all these data took quite a while and patience ;-)
Kurt-Peter
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Thank you, and you are right. This is where Scheduler or at least ACP can really help. Our customers routinely get 20-50 or more hours of data on a single object.