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M42, Great Nebula in Orion, 13 Nov 2012, David Dearden

M42, Great Nebula in Orion, 13 Nov 2012

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

High clouds came in while setting this up, so at first I was looking through a lot of clouds and could easily resolve the Trapezium but could not see much nebulosity. I left this running as the night wore on and it seemed to clear up a bit. So I'll try stacking the results and see how we do. I tried to enhance the dynamic range by stacking the “cloudy” images with the clear ones, but it didn’t work so well; I’ve obviously blown out the core. This was a “just for fun” attempt anyway.

Reprocessed by stacking the images in groups based on how much cloud I shot through, then layer mask combined them to try to preserve the core. I'm happier with this revised result. M42's dynamic range makes it one of the more difficult objects to process, even though it is relatively easy to shoot because it is bright.

Date: 13 Nov 2012

Subject: M42, Great Nebula in Orion

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector+0.5x Antares telereducer

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: Orion ST80 + DSI Ic + PHD 1.13.7

Camera: DSI IIc (no chiller, but 0 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, no dither

Exposure: 70/100 x 180 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map & flats, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack

Processing: Neb 3 crop, autocolor; StarTools , Develop, HDR (core), Deconvolute, Track, Repair (Warp). CS6 Astronomy Tools star color enhance and layer mask Gaussian blurred blending..

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    M42, Great Nebula in Orion, 13 Nov 2012, David Dearden
    Original
  • M42, Great Nebula in Orion, 13 Nov 2012, David Dearden
    B
  • M42, Great Nebula in Orion, 13 Nov 2012, David Dearden
    C

Histogram

M42, Great Nebula in Orion, 13 Nov 2012, David Dearden