Pointed my telescope at the Orion Nebula and got a weird purple blob instead of those clear shots everyone posts

I finally got my new-to-me Canon DSLR hooked up to my 8-inch Dobsonian (you know, the cheap way) and aimed it at M42 last Tuesday. After stacking 30 frames in DeepSkyStacker, the whole thing came out this strange purple color with almost no blue or red detail at all. Turns out I had the white balance set to 'incandescent' from some indoor test shots I did earlier (oops). I reprocessed the raw files after fixing that and suddenly those pink hydrogen clouds and blue reflection nebulae popped right out. Has anyone else had a simple camera setting ruin their first attempt at astrophotography?

2 comments

2 Comments

tyler_bell2d ago

That "purple blob" had me wondering, did you tweak the histogram stretch at all before stacking?

elizabethn562d ago

Always thought stretching before stacking was just extra work with no real benefit, honestly. But that purple blob in your shot is wild, it really shows how the data can change when you mess with the histogram first. I guess I was wrong about it being pointless because it seems to help bring out those faint details you'd otherwise lose. Definitely gonna try that on my next session to see if I can pull out some color like that.