M42: Compare and Contrast

Comment

Comment by Philip A Cruden on January 27, 2013 at 9:42pm

Whatever LOL! it all looks great to me

Comment by Trevor Woodrow on January 22, 2013 at 3:06pm

Lol, I am with you Marc and thanks for the kind words. The FOV of the refractor is much larger, an...well prettier (technical term). I was very surprised with what the Mak offered. Never really tried imaging with it before. After this, I just may try some more. In the image below, the marrying of the two images I think produced a far superior image. I need to touch up the stars and re-layer some of the whispy stuff from the orginal back into the image but beyond that, ....

Actually I am just happy to finally get out after so long, lol!!!

Comment by Marc Basti on January 22, 2013 at 11:39am

I vote refractor on this one-big view++. Although, that mak snagged some real nice detail in the trap area-cool. Lol when you mentioned the ease of use (w/refractor), when I break out my C8 (galx.season) I don't say I use it, I say I do battle w/it. Nice looking pics all around man. Marc

Comment by Trevor Woodrow on January 21, 2013 at 7:15pm

Combined the Mak-cass data with the refractor...

Comment by Trevor Woodrow on January 21, 2013 at 7:02pm

Thanks Greg! I agree. From a practical standpoint, shooting with the Refactor was much easier. Set up, tracking the whole nine. Working with the Mak-Cass was painful with my equipment and I had to throw out several subs for ellongated starts. This is of course is what you would expect....what I did not expect was how easy the Mak-Cass data was to process. The refractor data took me hours to get what you see. The Mak-Cass took minutes.

Looking forward, I am curious how this Mak-Cass will perform on dimmer objects. I have to say I was happily surprised with this.

Comment by Greg Marshall on January 21, 2013 at 11:30am

Trevor, it's always difficult to compare images at different magnifications. When measured in arcseconds, the Mak-Cass probably produced a "more detailed" image, but the refractor image looks sharper because of the scale (i.e., the apparent FWHM is better with the refractor, while the actual FWHM is perhaps better with the Mak-Cass). The refractor also seems to have given you a less-noisy image, but that might be just the processing. Most importantly (to me, anyway), the wider image from the refractor is a much better composition.