Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon (matthew.maclean)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: 41 the01 Ori · 42 c Ori · 43 the02 Ori · 44 iot Ori · 45 Ori · De Mairan's nebula · Great Orion Nebula · Hatysa · Lower Sword · M 42 · M 43 · Mairan's Nebula · NGC 1973 · NGC 1975 · NGC 1976 · NGC 1977 · NGC 1980 · NGC 1981 · NGC 1982 · Orion Nebula · Sh2-279 · Sh2-281 · The star 42Ori · The star 45Ori · The star θ1Ori · The star θ2Ori · The star ιOri · Upper Sword · VdB44 · the Running Man Nebula

Powered byPixInsight

Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon

Powered byPixInsight

Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon

I managed to collect about two hours on I think the night before the full moon (only 99.8% illuminated!) since clear sky time is so hard to find this winter. If it had been anything other than the Orion nebula, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but I gave it a try with my L-Pro filter. In summer, I was measuring (SQM) about 18.5 mag/arcsec2 (~Bortle 7) and I have verified that snow cover does indeed make it worse; this winter, even with no moonlight, I have been getting around 17.5 (~Bortle 8). With the nearly full moon, I didn't even bother with a reading, but it was bad.

Still, for only two hours of capture, I got something nice. My main goal with this image project was to use some short-exposures I had collected two weeks before to control the brightness of the core and the Trapezium. My small refractor setup has a resolution of 2 arcsec/pixel, which gives me about 10 pixels of spacing corner-to-corner between the four Trapezium stars (as computed by their Dec and RA positions). So, resolution is crude, but the four (A,B,C,D) are individually resolvable and I am quite satisfied that I managed to preserve them in my final image.

With only two hours in the bright skies, all the noise in the background was the toughest thing. I had to really darken the background more than I would have preferred. Really, more integration time is needed, but it's what I have, and I learned a lot more about PixInsight trying to mask off the dim areas and smooth the background out. It's a little over-smoothed maybe, but I think it's the best compromise I could manage.

Northeast Imagers
William Optics GT Series
Light Polluted skies

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.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4272451
PixInsight job	XDXQVP7M93QOPLLJTG9QWTHOOXM2R2MX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	05h34m50s.92
RA (top/left)	05h32m13s.41
RA (top/right)	05h32m18s.43
RA (bottom/right)	05h37m29s.20
RA (bottom/left)	05h37m23s.60

Dec (center)	-05°17′29″.4
Dec (top/left)	-04°25′58″.5
Dec (top/right)	-06°10′03″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	-06°09′10″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	-04°24′56″.7

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon

Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon

Orion Nebula M42 under a full moon

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information