M42 in Context (David McClain)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Great Nebula in Orion · Horsehead nebula · IC 423 · IC 431 · IC 432 · IC 434 · IC 435 · M 42 · M 43 · NGC 1973 · NGC 1975 · NGC 1976 · NGC 1977 · NGC 1980 · NGC 1981 · NGC 1982 · NGC 1990 · NGC 1999 · NGC 2023 · NGC 2024 · Part of the constellation Orion (Ori) · The star 31Ori · The star 42Ori · The star 45Ori · The star Alnilam (εOri) · The star Alnitak (ζOri) · The star θ1Ori · The star θ2Ori · The star ιOri · The star σOri

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M42 in Context

An image that places M42 in context with the belt region of Orion. Another surprise to me was the amount of dark clouds surrounding the region. This is an HDR exposure from two stacks: 12x300s + 12x30s to capture some of the structure in M42 along with the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae up near Zeta Ori.

I have finally settled on F4 with the 200 mm Canon lens. Seems like the best compromise setting for speed of acquisition for faint background objects and reasonable ease of focus and control of comatic images. The edges of the frames still show coma, but that's the nature of compromise. I also shoot all images on the Canon 6D at ISO 400.

Wow! Compare the look of M42 here (taken with the stock Canon 6D) and my very first image taken with the ATIK 490 + C8 HyperStar. Same region, but the Canon totally lacks the red sensitivity of the ATIK CCD. Amazing what is lost to the red blocking filter in the Canon 6D. Bright red features get turned to black features in the Canon images because none of the color channels is picking up any signal. Meanwhile the ATIK CCD says there is plenty of red signal there.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	902015
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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