Orion Nebula - Per Request Unprocessed Image Added

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
This image was supposed to be impossible. :)

Of course it's awesome that my Astro Lucky streak continues as I was lucky to be able to capture this one. I had gone out last Tuesday to Joshua Tree for a 2nd test on my new iOptron Gem28 Astro mount. I had a few things I needed to iron out, so that was my goal, I had figured I would wrap things up by 7:30pm or so and head back home. Of course if you have seen my timelapse, my eternal optimism had lead me to set up 2 of my cameras shooting timelapses in the night sky, also despite the 73% moon which was really washing out so many stars.

After I did my tests on the new Gem28, I decided what the heck, let me aim it at Orion and see how well it does at aiming at it and then tracking with it. When I saw Orion showing up really well after a test image, I decided that since I was already there and set up, I might as well take some more test images just to see. And anyway, I had 2 cameras doing timelapses, I might as well let me shoot a while longer... :)

So this is the result of imaging Orion. The main thing that struck me is that the color that surrounds the Orion core (normally blue for me) was not there. I could see the shape of the nebula, but it was absent of color in that outer area. The core area was still filled with a lot of red, which was awesome. So my guess for the lack of color in the nebula area surrounding it (along with Running Man) was that the moonlight washed it out. I have seen others come up with similar images, so I actually was quite happy with the look as it's again different. Not intentionally, but non the less, it is different and a bit cool to my thinking. Thankfully I was once again lucky! :)

iOptron Gem28 - Tracking
Nikon D850 - Not Modified
Tamron 150-600mm @ 600mm
30 - Light Frames @ ISO 64, 45 secs, f6.3
35 - Flat Frames
46 - Dark Frames
36 - Bias Frames

All comments are welcome,

Jim

#1 - Processed
OrionNebulaX_20220111_dw.jpg



#2 - Graeme was asking about the Original, so here is the Original that was stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and includes the Lights, Darks, Flats and Bias frames. There has been no processing to this other then converting to 8bit and downsizing to 1000 pix wide.
OrionNebula_20220111_1000px.jpg
 
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Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Looks to me to be super sharp and detailed. so I guess the tracking part was spot on. I would never know that the colors were not as expected, they sure look good to me.
 

Jameel Hyder

Moderator
Staff member
Pretty tack sharp stars and the nebula color is nice. This is somewhat like IR I guess, the colors can be tweaked depending on conditions as well as palette chosen.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Pretty tack sharp stars and the nebula color is nice. This is somewhat like IR I guess, the colors can be tweaked depending on conditions as well as palette chosen.
Thanks Jameel, it did turn out nice.

I would say it's in between IR and Normal photography, and closer to Normal photography then IR as there are set ways the colors should look. WIth shooting with a color camera, your DSO should look like whatever the color sensor picked up. If you are shooting on a Mono Astro camera with all of the filters used, you can choose from 2 or 3 common color palettes when processing.

I still have no clue as to how the other Orion shot I posted a few weeks ago was so green. In my 2 years of doing Astro that never happened before to me. With this one, the core is still full of the Ha wave length which is Red. The outer edges on my color camera have always been blue before. I don't change it. So with it lacking color, all I can guess is the moon light washed the color out.

There is no Custom Profile being used, not custom WB, no Channel Swapping. So in that way it's nothing like IR. But... there can be some tweaking to colors, but nothing major when using a Color camera to capture Astro. When shooting with a Mono Astro camera, that's where I think it might be closer to IR as to the amount of things being done. But I am shooting color, so that is my reference.
 

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Jim,

This is an excellent result! Looks like that new mount is going to really help you get to the next level. I like the colors and the definition in this - really makes for an excellent image!

You are going to start finding out that even shooting good old one shot color RGB stuff that it is not always easy to duplicate results on the same target, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the color rendition. In fact, I would go so far as to say that when I put in a large number of hours on processing an image, it is almost always the 'getting the colors to look how I want them to' portion of post processing that takes up easily 70% of the time, once the preprocessing steps (which eventually become mostly turn the crank) are finished. So lots of possible reasons for the colors differences on this:

  • Different locations?
  • Different camera/filter setups?
  • Different portion of the moon cycle? (as you stated above)
  • Different elevation of target or area of the sky with relation to light pollution sources?
  • Different length subframes?
  • Different number of subframes?
  • In the case of a non temperature controlled camera, different camera temperature?
  • Different post processing software?
  • Different post processing approach?

All of these factors can affect the final coloring of the result to a greater or lesser degree. And then if you start talking about narrowband collection and processing, the list gets even longer :)

Personally, I find this rendition more to my liking, but that brings up the final point that of course we all already know - at the end of the day how we each react the colors in an image becomes very subjective anyway.

ML
 

Graeme F

Well-Known Member
Back after a break and what incredible pictures on this forum! There are so many photos on this site I would love to save as a screen saver! This is a great shot Jim.
 

Graeme F

Well-Known Member
I'd love to see a raw image unprocessed of this Jim - uncropped, unprocessed etc just to see the transformation. I'm trying to learn how to process these sort of images and that would be really wonderful!
 
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