Sunday, December 05, 2010

Sword of Orion, D7000, Core Exposed (?)



I wrestled with GIMP tonight and got a better view of the core in M42 in this image. This is coupled with a stack of 1 minute frames which I gathered for the core. It's better, and now that I have an idea of how to do this I'll start gathering more quantities of different exposures per object.

4 comments:

Roberto said...

Great shot! I think this view is better than first. The core is cleaner and has more details, and the color seems more natural. Great job, Phil! Congratulations.

pd- here we have only rainy days. I'm still waiting for a clear night

cheers
Rober

Phil said...

Hey Roberto! Thanks a lot for the compliment. I am glad this came out the way it did, and hope to use the method for other images.
I hope the skies clear up for you soon!

RoryG said...

It looks like you're on the right track! The colors look better, too.

It doesn't look like you need it, but here is a link to that tutorial I told you about:

http://www.theglasgowfamily.org/files/Processing_the_Sword_of_Orion.pdf

One thing I do differently now is to save the stacked image in PNG format. That saves having to do the TIFF-to-BMP conversion in Paint.NET. Both GIMP and Paint.NET work with PNGs.

Using the steps outlined in the tutorial, I produced the following images using the same set of exposures from one imaging session:

http://www.theglasgowfamily.org/galleries/astronomy/images/nebulae/Sword_of_Orion.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DkGQ5Y6jn7s/TJ4Fl1JLv5I/AAAAAAAAAS4/hQkD8hyvG00/s1600/auction-Sword+of+Orion+-+large+with+title.png

Phil said...

Thanks a lot, Rory. I'll check it out on the weekend!