Here is a true color image of the Zeta Orionis region in the constellation of Orion. This rich area of the sky is loaded with deep sky objects. The central bright blue star is Alnitak, also known as Zeta Orionis. This is the lowest star in the Belt of Orion. To the left of Zeta is the famous Flame Nebula, NGC 2024. The long descending H2 region is IC 434, and it contains the famous Horsehead Nebula. The entire area to the left is of IC434 is filled with dark obscuring dust. This obscuring dark nebula has flowed in front of the brighter H2 region and has a familiar form resembling a horse’s head. Lastly, above bright Alnitak lies a bubble of gas cataloged as IC 432.
I’m definitely not thrilled with this image – it looks great as long as you don’t zoom in too much. During processing, I noticed the focus could have been better, which would have brought out even more fine detail. Over time I will re-shoot this target hopefully with sharper results.
Some Learnings
As I have been using this setup, I have learned the three critical items for a good imaging run, that I must remember to do without fail:
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- Balance the camera and lens on the mount as perfectly as possible
- Level the tripod
- Spend time getting critical focus
- Get a great polar alignment
If these items are done before each imaging run, (and the weather cooperates), I am pretty much assured of good clean data. Otherwise I will end up throwing out data, and this is basically lots of lost time. I’ve decided it’s better to stop a image series and fix whatever problem there might be.
Click on the image for a larger version.
Image Info
- Imaged from the KPO field, Saint Cloud, Florida.
- Camera : ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
- Lens: Canon 100-400 f/5.6L lens, set to 400mm
- Mount: iOptron SmartEQ Pro
- Hydrogen Alpha: 12 subframes of 300s = 60 min integration (used as the Luminance channel)
- Red: 12 subframes of 300s = 60 min integration
- Green: 12 subframes of 300s = 60 min integration
- Blue: 11 subframes of 300s = 55 min integration
- Total integration time: 235 min = 3.9 hours.
- Captured via ASIAir Pro automation
- Optical tracking via ASIAir automation, currently using ST4 mount control via the ASI120MM-S guide camera
- Separate channels stacked and LRGB integrated in Astro Pixel Processor
- Cropped and processed in Nebulosity
- Final processing in Aperture