Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  41 the01 Ori  ·  43 the02 Ori  ·  De Mairan's nebula  ·  Great Nebula in Orion  ·  M 42  ·  M 43  ·  NGC 1976  ·  NGC 1982  ·  Sh2-281  ·  The star θ1Ori  ·  The star θ2Ori
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M42, Great Nebula in Orion, LHαGB, 15 Mar 2019, David Dearden
Powered byPixInsight

M42, Great Nebula in Orion, LHαGB, 15 Mar 2019

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M42, Great Nebula in Orion, LHαGB, 15 Mar 2019, David Dearden
Powered byPixInsight

M42, Great Nebula in Orion, LHαGB, 15 Mar 2019

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

1344 ± 20 LY

Here’s an attempt at LHαGB imaging of the Orion Nebula with far too little data. I’ve been wanting to get to it with my ASI camera but the weather has not cooperated and at this point I’ll need to wait until next year for more. The quintessential winter object posted on the first day of spring. I had horrible vignetting issues with this image. It’s not a particularly deep image, and I obviously struggled with the dynamic range around the Trapezium, but I like how the colors turned out and the detail is better than in any of my previous attempts so I guess I’ll keep it. I used Hα in place of red.

Date: 15 Mar 2019

Subject: M42, Great Nebula in Orion

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific Coma Corrector

Filters: ZWO 31 mm diameter unmounted 7 nm L, Hα, G, B

Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD 2.000j)+PEC

Guiding: Orion Thin Off-axis Guider + DSI IIc +PHD 2.6.5dev6 (Win 10 ASCOM)

Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool, -20 °C, Gain 139 Offset 21

Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 3.0.3.170

Exposure: 18x180 Hα, 15x120 L, 20x10 L, 12x120 G, & 20x120 B

Stacking: Deep Sky Stacker 4.1.1 (64-bit) dark+flat (no bias), κ-σ stacking with κ = 1.5.

Processing: StarTools 1.4.341: Software binned everything 2x2 with a 25 pixel border crop. Gradient wiped Hα and L. Stretched and HDR optimized. Deconvoluted and untrack denoised. Separately processed G & B and stretched about the same amount but did no deconvolution. Used Photoshop Annie’s Astro Actions for RGB combine, using Hα for R. Blended 10 s L with 120 s L (with a Gaussian blurred layer mask) to retain some detail in the core. Used a combination of the combined L and Hα as overall luminance, again employing layer masks to remove some bad vignetting errors (I need to work on my scope!). Boosted saturation to taste. AstroFrame.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M42, Great Nebula in Orion, LHαGB, 15 Mar 2019, David Dearden