Re: Newbie trying to figure out StarTools,
Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 9:55 pm
Oh maybe i'm not doing something right. I took 10 exposures at 4m, 20 @ 3m, 20 @ 1m and 20 @ 30s. I took the same amount of darks and 20 bias. I did not get any flats (yes I know it says they are pretty much necessary) because I can never get it right and they end up just ruining my images. Anyways I stacked all of those together. Should I be stacking them separately, as in stacking the 4m together, then the 3m, 1m and so on?almcl wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 9:34 pm First of all, non-expert disclaimer here, but while we wait for Ivo who will be able to give a much more informed opinion, here are some thoughts.
M42 is quite a difficult target, I find. There's a very bright core round the Trapezium but also some wonderful fainter detail in the outer cloud. You have captured this and I have tried processing to bring out some of both aspects, but you may find getting a second set of data with a much shorter exposure where you expose just for the trapezium and then, after separately processing this, layering it in, gives a more satisfying result.
Anyway, I loaded your data, Auto dev'd it once, binned, cropped and wiped it, then Autodev'd it again using a 'Region of interest' on the red nebulosity, used the HDR module with the reveal core preset, then shrunk the stars using the shrink module (they looked a little bit soft) used the colour module which bought out some nice colours, and the turned the tracking off. The result is below. If you want more detail (you may not!) just ask?