I wrote yesterday about my remote imaging of the Orion Alnitak area.
Well, Robin Scagell read it and noticed my image of the Flame nebula.
I said in the post, the images were unprocessed – just straight downloads from the Canon camera. So he quickly ran the small image I had shown, through his Photoshop software.
To my surprise, he pointed out that the Horsehead nebula was discernable in the image, after auto-adjusting the color levels.
I was pleased! So I thought I should have a try at processing the images myself.
I don’t have Photoshop, but I do use the excellent and free GIMP image manipulation program.
I picked what appeared to be a decent image from the ten or so, I’d captured.
I used the Color Levels tool, picked a point in the image which should be black using the “eyedropper”, and clicked “Auto”.
Orion Flame And Horsehead Nebulae
GIMP adjusted the colors and produced this image to the right.
Just compare it to yesterday’s version!
And this is just a crude attempt at image processing. I’m a beginner and this took all of 2 minutes…
However.. not only is the Flame nebula MUCH more striking, but you can also clearly see the Horsehead nebula! (Although the definition of the stars has suffered)
But what it does show, is that the data is present in the camera image… It just needs some clever software, to bring it out for us to see.
And I should say, the image published here is a smaller and lower resolution version, to make it load quickly on the web. The original is better. But even so, I think you can clearly see what I mean.
Everytime I do some more astro-imaging with my new camera, I feel ever more encouraged!
