Orion Nebula M42

I don’t see much Astrophotography posted here so I felt it was time to represent. I’ve been using Topaz Studio 2 and Denoise AI to post process my astro photos with great success.

Here is the Great Orion Nebula. The most beautiful object in the sky!!!

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Hello,

I have joined the Topaz Denoise beta testers to provide an astrophotographer point of view.
My site is here : Astrophographie, Olivier Batteux, Reims, Royan
I have processed again some of my older pictures with Topaz Denoise, after I discovered it recently.

What happened to the stars ??? They have the aspect of rings. Is it from an enormous treatment artefact ? Or an enormous focusing failure ?

Seems to be focusing at looking further.

I’m using an AT72 ED scope which is not an apo, so some chromatic aberration is expected. It is not an enormous artifact from processing or an enormous failure to achieve focus.
Maybe the issue is your enormous bad attitude!!!:smiley:

The rings around the stars are called The Gibbs Effect and can be processed out in programs specifically designed for astro images like PixInsight.

Since Topaz Labs does not offer products for that very specialized use case, it does not surprise me that their products will produce artifacts like what is seen here.

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Thank you for the helpful advice.
I’m not really bothered by the rings and I’m not ready for Pixinsight yet. Pixinsight is too complicated and I don’t have the time needed to invest in learning the program to make it worth while. Startools also has a fringe killer function that can mitigate this effect but I really don’t find the rings so offensive that I would need to deal with them.

I completely agree with you that PI is complex and has a steep learning curve.

I’ve only gotten through the preprocessing steps on a few images and find the results absolutely astounding considering the light pollution they were shot through. Looking forward to finishing them soon.

If you do ever decide to jump into the deep end of the pool with PI, I highly recommend “Inside PixInsight 2nd edition” by Warren A. Keller.

https://www.amazon.com/Inside-PixInsight-Patrick-Practical-Astronomy-ebook-dp-B07FQ9PG4J/dp/B07FQ9PG4J/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

While it does jump around a bit as far as following the natural progression of the workflow, it has been an invaluable resource for me.

I used it to create a spreadsheet that allows me to track where I am in the very long and sometimes complex sequence. One for each image allows me to pick up where I left off when life inevitably calls me away.

Thanks, maybe when I retire I’ll have the time to invest in learning Pixinsight
Right now I’m satisfied with stacking and calibrating in Astro Pixel Processer along with some other processing tools then finishing in Studio2. Denoise ai does a very nice job as long as you pay attention to the settings. Right now it only takes me about an hour to fully process an image after stacking and calibrating are done.