M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion (wadeh237)

M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion

This is M42, the Great Nebula in Orion.

After many long weeks (months?) of nothing but cloudy skies, we had an unexpected clear night at my house earlier this week. I didn't have a plan, and there wasn't even a scope or camera on the mount. Before dark, I brought the scope up into my home office to rework the adapters connecting the OAG to the camera. I'm now using a Baader T-2 Quick Changer, which uses a round dovetail so that I can rotate the camera with respect to the OAG. I have a second one on order, which will go between the OAG and the scope, so that I can rotate the whole camera assembly with respect to the scope. Anyway, I wasn't really ready for a clear night, but I threw what I had together and put it on the mount.

Not sure of which target to go for, I waited for dark and then looked up. I could see that Orion was pretty favorably placed. It's rare that we get clear nights during the season where it's available. And even then, the trees in my yard get in the way most of the time. I have about a 1.5 to 2 hour window where I can catch it between the trees. Because of that, I've really not imaged it much and don't have one that I like. So I decided to go for M42.

There's not much data here, just about 90 minutes worth. I was pretty pleased with what I could get with such short time. I'm not completely happy with the brighter stars. They are pretty badly clipped, and have large blue halos - and this was with just 30 second exposures. I may go back and reprocess the stars at some point. This image is probably a good exercise for handling bloated stars, so it will be good practice.

Here are the exposure details:

58x30 seconds Red, 47x30 seconds Green and 53x45 seconds Blue. The scope is a Stellarvue SV80ST at F/6 with an ASI1600 camera. Unguided on an AP1600GTO mount with absolute encoders.

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	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

	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

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1931611
PixInsight job	VNSNF2SUSF8HLSKOQEX5DUT74CJ7KH05
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h34m59s.99
RA (top/left)	05h38m39s.52
RA (top/right)	05h31m30s.93
RA (bottom/right)	05h31m19s.63
RA (bottom/left)	05h38m29s.43

Dec (center)	-05°22′16″.8
Dec (top/left)	-04°39′54″.7
Dec (top/right)	-04°36′46″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	-06°04′31″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	-06°07′46″.2

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