M42 - Sword of Orion - 200mm f5.6 camera lens (Tom Gray)

M42 - Sword of Orion - 200mm f5.6 camera lens

Revision title: 'Traditional' LRGB (using OSC) 2x2 bin

'The human race is locked in deadly combat with the 'Android Hordes' in the Orion System. Light years from the front line, the Doctor and Charley arrive...' As we celebrate or commiserate 60 years of the popular UK TV drama Dr Who, I was fortunate to have a short window to visit the Orion arm of the Milky Way, taking my first image of the 'Sword of Orion' this year.

A massive molecular cloud, 40 LY in diameter, and 1300 LY away, it glows with HII emissions ignited by a bright trapezium of stars, 100,000 times hotter than our sun (lost in the glare within my image). Using HDR in Startools, I have been able to reveal the core, and a fuzzy trapezium, shown in the mono revision.

The Orion nebula, Messier 42, is the crucible of this complex region, accompanied by M43 De Mairan's nebula, the projection, which points towards the famous 'running man' who left in NGC 1977.

Captured towards the end of an evening of imaging, as high cloud/haze crept in, I managed to salvage 16 x 300s subs for this image. I had hoped to capture some of the wider nebulosity, at the expense of over-exposing the bright core. Layering multiple stacks with different exposures helps to reveal the trapezium, a project for another night. Taken with my UHC-L booster filter, this helps to reveal the hydrogen envelope, but the OIII is lost in this RGB processing. I will try extracting the Ha/OIII channels and combining using pixel math. For an old f5.6 200mm SLR lens, I'm quite pleased with the result, with characteristic iris spikes around the bright stars. The Sword of Orion was one of the first deep space wonders that I turned my scope to as a loon... and hid behind the sofa to watch Dr Who!

C

Title: Mono version post-processed in Startools with HDR

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D

Title: 2x2 binned

Description: Processed to show off some f the surrounding dust - I tried to tame the core, but these long exposures make that almost impossible, without using an HDR optimisation tool... or shorter exposures.

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E

Title: LRGB using extracted channels (Bin 1x1)

Description: This version essentially combines revisions C and D. Channels were extracted, a mono channel created with HDR optimisation in Startools to reveal the core, then an LRGB composite image created in Siril, with transformation and noise reduction. Bit of hash up, and the colour different (perhaps I mixed up the channels) but it worked to reveal a 'dusty Orion nebula'.

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F

Title: 2x2 LRGB composite

Description: Sorry... can't help myself

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G

Title: Drizzle x 2 and cropped

Description: Drizzle makes quite a difference to the resolution with these camera lenses and small pixels

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H

Title: 'Traditional' LRGB (using OSC) 2x2 bin

Description: A more traditional palette, showing off the pink hydrogen in this 'Great Nebula'

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I

Title: HaRGB

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9339956
PixInsight job	JSC1NYU5PPRF2RJ3M40RSQRJGELVIA5V
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h34m25s.50
RA (top/left)	05h29m35s.20
RA (top/right)	05h29m31s.27
RA (bottom/right)	05h39m16s.96
RA (bottom/left)	05h39m17s.42

Dec (center)	-05°34′48″.5
Dec (top/left)	-03°45′00″.1
Dec (top/right)	-07°24′01″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	-07°24′24″.7
Dec (bottom/left)	-03°45′03″.8

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