M42 The Great Orion Nebula "The Third Rail of Astrophotography" Ha(Lum) + OSC (Brandon Tackett)

M42 The Great Orion Nebula "The Third Rail of Astrophotography" Ha(Lum) + OSC

I have been purposely avoiding trying to take a quality capture of the Orion Nebula for the better part of a year since first getting into the hobby. While I took some initial runs with my DSLR last year, I never was happy with the results. While one of the first beginner targets, see my first DSO capture with my cell phone digiscoping through my Celestron 4 SE in January 2019, the high dynamic range of the core of the nebula makes this a difficult objective to capture well.

With the wider 400 mm focal length the RASA 8 afforded, I finally tried in early December with focus issues running the captures. My second attempt when better and I got decent data from 5, 10, 30, and 60 OSC color subs. My goal was to use HDR composition to really bring out the core well. As you can see, this did not quite go to plan, but more tinkering to be done in the future. I added 2 min Ha captures to increase the surrounding dust in the luminance layer, but decided against adding it NBRGB combination as it took the image to a further red hue then I was aiming toward.

I am pleased to finally get a capture of the Orion Nebula, but still consider it the third rail of astrophotography. Easy to see and capture, but hard capture the core well without suffering the consequences.

The nebula itself is a diffuse hydrogen emission nebula approximately 1300 light years away in the Orion spur of the Perseus arm of the Milky Way. The nebula is approximately 24 light years across and contains the equivalent mass of the 2000 times the sun. This is the location of the nearest significant star formation region near earth. The nebula can easily be viewed as the mild “star” of the orion sword scabbard.

Final
Original
B
C
D

B

Description: Single 8 min sub with unmodified Cannon T5i Dec 2019 with my Celestron 9.25 Edge HD

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: 10 stacked 6 min subs with Cannon T5i and Celestron 9.25 Edge HD with 0.7x focal reducer January 2020

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: My very first DSO capture in January of 2019

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4206083
PixInsight job	F1VYBP4CIOQJZ0EWEFSFDJTTX6DK84BF
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h35m02s.27
RA (top/left)	05h31m15s.96
RA (top/right)	05h31m22s.83
RA (bottom/right)	05h38m49s.51
RA (bottom/left)	05h38m40s.82

Dec (center)	-05°24′18″.5
Dec (top/left)	-04°09′36″.1
Dec (top/right)	-06°40′22″.6
Dec (bottom/right)	-06°38′53″.7
Dec (bottom/left)	-04°08′09″.4

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