Orion Nebula - Feb 2021 (Juha)

Orion Nebula - Feb 2021

The Orion Nebula, my first proper try on untracked astrophotography!

Gear used:

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II
Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f3.5 (a film era lens adapted to MFT)
Sirui 3T-35K tripod (the super small one, I placed it on a bench to gain some height)
Multiple layers of warm winter clothes

Shot from Helsinki, Finland but on a beach towards the sea so light pollution wasn’t too much of an issue. Early February 2021.

This was shot untracked at 135mm f/3.5, so I tried to reach 1000 lights each about 0,8 seconds, but had to stop when my toes started to really freeze 😅 Got to maybe 700 or 800 lights if I remember correctly, and also took around a 100 darks, biases and flats each.

Stacking and initial processing done on Siril and the rest of the editing on Affinity Photo. I tried processing the image a few times, testing different stretching techniques, each time getting a bit more of the nebulosity visible. I’m pretty happy with the results, although looking at it now the sky looks a bit too blue for my tastes, and the overall colour balance is just a bit off. Still liking the image though, and I’m definitely gonna try shooting Orion again!

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	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

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	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

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

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Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
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