λ Ori HII Region / Orion's Head in SH2-264Yesterday (Jan, 6ths) evening the sky cleared up for the first time since New Years eve. Though I was very tired and the night temperatures were predicted to being as low as
-11°C , I carried my equipment to the small balcony and prepared everything, including PA via plate solving ... because Polaris is obscured by the environment and thus always out of sight.
When Orion reaches SE, it's head slowly appeared over the big oak tree and the mountain ridges besides. Last year I photographed the
Meissa region for the first time but I only had the very nice Samyang
135mm f/2.0 lens which's angle was too narrow to capture the whole region.
Meanwhile I had bought the
Samyang 85 mm f/1.4 which I used with a
Canon 7D (APS-C) and a
CLS clip-in filter. The unguided tracking was easy going but after having stacked the 120s images, severe walking noise was obvious. It took me alot of trial-and-error to suppress it.
While
Betelgeuse (left, reddish) and
Bellatrix (right, icy-blue) were well within the frame, below of them also a strong part of
Barnard's Loop appeared to my surprise: My 12 years old
Canon 7D Mark I has always been unmodified. Nevertheless there is quite a nice amount of
HII visible in the result.
Please consider comparing this image with
my last year's approach! 
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