M42 and Running Man Nebula

Another stunner Dave!!!!

No worries Michael - I'd *really* appreciate it.

And in all fairness, the quality of images here, given our equipmet and sky conditions, is in my opinion excellent. I have have seen many images here that outshine many of those in the monthly mags. And we get a great range - Martin and Conor's atmospherics which are stunning, Dave L's planets which are to level of Mr D Peach, those fabulous widefields from all the DSLR's and who could forget Anthony's images - he even made APOD - major Kudos.

I regularly look at the images produced by Gendler, Misti, Gabany and a whole host other folks in the US with 6-figure setups and automated observatories in the desert. Now, *they* are truly stunning, but we can't compete. We can still give them a good run for theior money - literally. With a twentieth of their equipment costs and 100 times more cloud we still come out with great images.

As ever though, a critical eye can point the imager to a new area of processing, or give them the impetus to tweak the setup just that little bit more. In the end, if its done in a positive manner, critisism can be a breath of fresh air and a real motivator. I've certainly taken a lot of great help from these boards and look where I am (you may quote me here and post up something amusing ). Seriously and genuinely, without the 'nice image' comments, the constructive critisism and a smattering of friendly competition, there would be little motivation to go out and do better. And then share the results with appreciative friends.

After all Michael, my favourite image is you in a balaclava. I can really offer you plenty of advice on *that* one... :lol:

Cheers

Dave McD

Thanks for the comments guys, all are really appreciated. Dave McD is so right. Constructive criticism is the only way to get better at this game. Jed and myself spent an awful lot of time this evening discussing this image to death! We highlighted most of the issues raised here and hopefully have solutions next time.

I suppose the key here was I ran outta time and wasnt able to get enough frames. Remember there was only 2x600secs and 3x300 sec frames. Realistically I would love to get 20x600s or similar that would have a huge impact on the signal/noise ratio. As I only had a few frames we had to use some frames we might normally have dropped (hence the egg stars). Also I need to use the UV/IR cut filter next time and thew full with of the 2"focusser to reduce vignetting.

The purpose of this image was really a proof of concept on the new 80ED. I think there is a lot of potential in that scope. I cant wait to get a couple of dozen frames equating to several hours of exposure.

Overall I'm amazed considering there was so little data involved. I cant wait to see what might be possible when all of the ducks are in a row.

Thanks again guys.

Dave forgot to mention. The exposure times I use are more a case of trial and error. I usually start low and then work up until the optimal balance of saturation and noise is acheived. I have a fair idea at this stage where that balance lies with my setup and objects of known brightness.

NDave L's planets which are to level of Mr D Peach,

thanks for the vote of confidence Dave, but lets not get carried away.. :lol:
have you seen this guys website??, jaw droppingly incredible doesnt describe it. :shock:
www.damianpeach.com/
there is an add for celestron if ever I saw one.

Anyway, thats a fine image, some of the star images are not quite circular, the red on the left looks like nebulosity, the image is abit grainy.
I've yet to take a deepsky image with perfect star images, all the same a great image. Like Dave said this is not meant in a bad way (I expect to be crucified when my next image goes up :lol: )

For those who are M42 fatigued, this object is a great one to refine your ability, its so bright that errors easily show up, once you get M42 bang on you've then graduated to the rest of the deep sky, thats the way I see it.

For those who are M42 fatigued, this object is a great one to refine your ability, its so bright that errors easily show up, once you get M42 bang on you've then graduated to the rest of the deep sky, thats the way I see it.

I wholeheartedly agree with you Dave. M42 is definitely one of those benchmark objects. If you look around the net you can easily find probably the widest range of quality of any deep sky object. Some utterly awful to some absolute stunners. Cetainly my goal this winter is to get the very best possible image of M42 that I possibly can. The nice thing is that in the image above you can nail down where it needs to improve easily. Thats progress in itself.