This is an object I've been wanting to image for a long time. M78 is a nebula located about 1,500 light years away in the constellation Orion, and as these things go, it really has it all: reflection elements, dark and dusty structure, emission regions, and--my favorite--Herbig-Haro objects. I actually didn't image this with my own equipment, I just processed the data: I purchased this data from
@Insight Observatory's Starbase image repository. I am seriously considering ordering a 16” Dream astrograph like Insight operates, and I wanted to get a feel for the data that it could produce. I wasn't disappointed: the data was terrific to work with.
From a processing perspective, this is a fairly high dynamic range target, with very bright areas surrounded by faint dust, so I had to use a modest application of HDRMT to bring out some of the core detail, along with some selective stretching of the faint areas to show off the dust. Even though there wasn't nearly as much integration time as I usually get on a target, noise levels weren't bad, and only very mild denoising was done just to damp down on the color noise. I did do a little bit of extremely light (70% attenuated) star reduction to give the nebulosity a little more room to shine. Aside from that, it was pretty basic stuff: this object kind of spoke for itself and my overall goal in processing was to avoid overcooking it and let it stand on its own two feet, if I could.
I'm looking forward to imaging this on my own equipment at some point and grabbing some more data, but the detail and signal quality from the Insight rig was really outstanding for the amount of integration time this represented.
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