Orion Nebula

[foggy beacon]

First time imaging the Orion Nebula.

336mm F4.8 (SVBony SV503 70ED with 0.8x FF)
Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTi
Canon EOS RP
165 (I think) x 30 sec
800 ISO

Bortle class 5-6

Still kinda bad with post processing. Keeping the raw data and may try again later. Also Orion was a little low initially and the light pollution glow may have affected the first 30-40 min of exposures.

[hard tusk]

Could you send me the data? If you'd like, I'd like to give it a try. I like editing Orion and there might be some potential left even I can get out.

But I'm not a pro, I'm using only free open source software. Still I got more details with less exposure time, slower scope and worse camera, so you might have the biggest difficulties with processing.

[foggy beacon]

yeah no worries dude. How should I send the data to you?

[hard tusk]

Idk, we usually use Google Drive or any other cloud service for it, because the files are usually to big. You could send a share link here or as a DM, thats up to you.

[foggy beacon]

Yeah sure. I'll see what I can do. It's quite late here, so I might sleep and send the data later. I have light, dark and bias

[hard tusk]

The stacked file is enough, probably it isn't where the detail gets lost. Sending all frames would be quite a lot effort, I don't think that would be worth it.

[foggy beacon]

ah ok, then I'll try to send it now, one sec

[hard tusk]

But no problem otherwise, I'm pretty busy myself currently, so I'll do it only in a few hours.

[foggy beacon]

@hard tusk it just fits lol

[hard tusk]

Ok thanks, good night then. I'll do it later.

[foggy beacon]

Thanks. Good luck and have fun!

[hard tusk]

This is a version with few nebula, but the core isn't blown out.

This version is with much more nebula. But it isn't very accurate. Like I manually erased some background noise... Thats not a very nice way. But it works apparently and its a matter of taste what you like more.

[narrow crane]

You should brighten the background it looks clipped

[hard tusk]

Ok yeah, I'm currently doing that

This is without manual background extraction.

[hard tusk]

I guess you'll see the image when I'm sleeping. I got out some more details and I didn't have any problems with the glow. So if you're interested, here's roughly my workflow (all software is free): 1. Siril (background extraction, colour calibration, stretching in 2-3 different versions, one with the core, one with nice stars, and one with much nebulosity) 2. Removing stars from the version with core and nebulosity by using starnet++ (I heard it's integrated in Siril now, but haven't tried it yet), 3. Sharpening the starless image of the core and nebulosity with Astrosharp (it only makes a small difference, but better than none) 4. Combining all 3 final images in Gimp. There are great tutorials using a similar workflow. They mostly just leave out starnet and Astrosharp, but I like to use them too for reducing star size and getting a bit more sharpness.

[foggy beacon]

That looks so much better! And thanks for the tips. I still have a lot more to learn I guess. All I did was use Starnet++ and did a bunch of level adjustments and curve stretches in Photoshop (and ofc exposure, vibrance, etc)

[hard tusk]

Yeah, I think the biggest improvement will come by using Siril, especially the background extraction is really helpful.

[foggy beacon]

Hey mate, so I've just re-processed the image following your steps. I'm pretty happy with the result, but only issue is that it seems to have more noise. I think it's caused by the background extraction, but might be wrong.