M42 and the Running Man nebula with Takahashi 150mm

[Astronomus]

First post on PF, thought I'd share my first serious attempt at astrophotography. I used itelescope since it's perpetual cloud cover where I'm at sadly, and all of my processing was done in Astroart. I learned a lot with this, but it's definitely an uphill struggle!

M42 and the Running Man nebula.

Total exposure time was 40 minutes (10 in R,G,B and Ha each) and the equipment was a Takahashi 150mm refractor with an SBIG STL-11000M CCD.

 

[Drakkith]

Nice. Did you use HA as a luminance frame?

 

[Astronomus]

Sort of. I tried to use just the H-alpha image as luminance with the RGB but it made the stars look really weird, especially with large halos around the brighter ones. I looked around and found Rob Gendler's website that discusses ways around this, and it helped a lot. One of his solutions was to lower the opacity of the Ha image relative to the others, then integrate it, and that did the trick for me.

 

[94JZA80]

nice shots of M3 and M42 guys!

 

[pmacias]

Congratulations on your first serious attempt at astrophotography! M42 and the Running Man nebula are both stunning subjects to capture and your image looks fantastic. It's great that you were able to use itelescope to overcome the perpetual cloud cover in your area and that you were able to learn a lot through this process. Astrophotography can definitely be an uphill struggle, but it's a rewarding one. Keep up the great work and keep learning and experimenting with different equipment and techniques. Happy stargazing!