Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  41 Ori A)  ·  41 Ori C  ·  41 Ori D  ·  41 the01 Ori  ·  42 Ori)  ·  42 c Ori  ·  43 Ori)  ·  43 the02 Ori  ·  44 Ori)  ·  44 iot Ori  ·  45 Ori  ·  Great Orion Nebula  ·  HD294221  ·  HD294259  ·  HD294261  ·  HD294262  ·  HD294263  ·  HD36540  ·  HD36541  ·  HD36550  ·  HD36559  ·  HD36560  ·  HD36593  ·  HD36606  ·  HD36629  ·  HD36630  ·  HD36655  ·  HD36671  ·  HD36712  ·  HD36713  ·  And 91 more.
M42 The Great Orion Nebula, George  Yendrey
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M42 The Great Orion Nebula

M42 The Great Orion Nebula, George  Yendrey
Powered byPixInsight

M42 The Great Orion Nebula

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This is my first narrow band data set/processing attempt of M42, The Great Orion Nebula.
This is a narrowband exposure of Ha, Sii, and Oiii with a combination of short, "medium", and "Longer" exposures for each filter to create a depth of exposure/data for the HDRMT tool in PixInsight to work with.  I will add the more detailed exposure data later, but I wanted to get this image out there for people to see without delaying for the exposure data.  

UPDATE: Exposure data has been added to the technical card information.
I have shown the data as all on 12/14/2022.  The reality is the exposures started in last week of November and extended through the few observing nights/periods that were usuable until the last night of imaging on 12/14/2022.  Which was about 6 nights in total.

Final Final Update 


I still was a bit disappointed about the Trapezium stars not being that visible in the previous version.  An additional factor is all that I've learned in the projects that came immediately after this one made me feel that there were so improvements to be had.  Those improvements did mean that I had to start the post processing almost from scratch.

So, the proper tools in the proper order, which again made everything else much simpler.  I also simplified the color palette process a bit (while adding some complexity further down).  I chose this time to use the straight SHO/Channel Combination to get the advantage of the SPCC tool. 

As I pulled the typical SHO green back and used color masks to enhance the tonal ranges that were revealed, a completely different (and more vivid in some ways) color arrangement became evident.  It is different than anything I've posted before, and I started to go back and try to get to a more familiar color result, but then decided to go with what was making itself evident.

I did also apply a GAME mask to do a bit of touch up on The Running Man, trying not to go overboard.

Russ Croman's color corrected HDRMT tool is a must on a target like this, IMO.  You don't really percieve how much the standard HDRMT tool mutes colors until you run his version that preserves them.  Which likely had a big influence on the resulting colors.

Cropped in a bit (not the original wide field) to emphasize the Nebula.  I did use the Lum to preserve/enhance the dimmer detail and it also added a bit of pop to the main nebula and The Running man.

I've left the previous up for comparisons, let me know what you think.

Enjoyj!!!
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This is a 'take' on the Hubble/SHO palette and I want to further experiment in the color palette area, so there may be some revisions posted later. There is approximately 13.65 hrs of integration time and the imaging took place on a few scattered nights between November and December with a total of 412 image frames.  On average there are approximately 100 images frames for each of the narrow band filters and Luminance - each of those is composed primarily of deep/long exposures to capture the dimmer detail with smaller sets of shorter exposures to encompass the detail in the bright regions that is more frequently lost in the 'glare'.

As it is, I am enamored with this image of one of the brightest star forming regions and nebula in the night sky - on of the few that is visible to the naked eye.

The monochrome imaging captured a level of detail that was simply not available in my previous OSC images and for the first time I was able to display the surrounding nebular cloud that is typically not seen in most images due the brightness of the core nebula.  The integration of short, medium and long exposures allowed HDRMT to reveal these details while still enabling the Trapezium at the core of the Orion Nebula to be visible.  

Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion.  It is one of the brightest nebula, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky, and is among the most intensely studied celestial features.[8] The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks, brown dwarfs, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula

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  • M42 The Great Orion Nebula, George  Yendrey
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M42 The Great Orion Nebula, George  Yendrey