The purpose of this exposure was to test a batch of PPF 400 120 that I purchased a few months ago. The negative frame had nice density and had been properly exposed. The focus, polar alignment and guiding were good.

This is not a great image of M42, but considering that the target was positioned directly in the light dome of Boston (five miles away) and there was a seven day old moon 30 degrees away in Taurus, this is not bad.

The first thing I noticed were the vertical and horizontal bars throughout the image. These are PowerLook 3000 scanner hardware artifacts. I have been using the scanner to scan astro images for two years, but I have not seen these artifacts before, so I am concerned that the scanner may be failing. I have emailed UMAX for support, but have not yet received a response.

As usual, the image was significantly vignetted. I created an anti-vignetting layer (AV) in Photoshop. This image has been stretched quite a bit (deliberately), so some circular color banding artifacts are visible. Aside from the AV, the only processing used for this image were levels and curves.

My conclusion about the film: it worked fine. The next step is to try the film at a dark site, without need of a filter.

• Title: M42 Test
• Exposure: 30 minutes @ f/6.7
• Filter: IDAS LPS
• Mount: Astro-Physics 600E QMD
• Camera: Pentax 67
• Telescope: Astro-Physics 130 f6
• Film: Kodak PPF 400 120 unhypered
• Location: Boston, MA
• Date: 09-Mar-03 19:53 EST
• Conditions: transparency 8, seeing 6, LVM 4, 20F, RH 35%
• Processing: UMAX PowerLook 3000, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1