It's been now two years since my son - back then 6 years old - asked santa for a telescope so that he could "watch the moon and Andromeda galaxy". As we were browsing together the night skies that winter it re-ignited my old love with the stars and few months later I was taking first steps in astrophotography.

This is now my third "season" to try out capturing Messier 42 and I thought that it could be kind of fun to see the progress side-by-side. This was also the first time trying to image the Orion nebula with an EQ mount from the backyard, in the past I've used an Az-Gti alt-az mount on our balcony as there's better FOV to lower altitudes (but no view to polaris for polar alignment).

Unfortunately the FOV in the backyard is really limited in lower altitudes so could manage only 21 minutes of usable subs. I also encountered severe guiding issues, plus EQMOD refused to start tracking when the nebula cleared past the trees so had to reboot everything right when should've started shooting. One of those nights I guess.. Finally, the CLS filter I'm using is throwing the color balance off big time with this target so I'll need to discover some new tricks to bring out the blue in the nebula. With all the troubles I'm happy that anything usable came out of it.

There are two additional M42 revisions from the previous seasons for comparison:

- Revision B: my first ever astrophoto in March 2018, 83 x 5" lights with Skymax 127, Az-Gti mount and unmodified Canon 1100d @ ISO 1600

- Revision C: November 2018 with Az-Gti mount with 500mm/f8 Maksutov telephoto lens and unmodified Canon 1100d @ ISO 1600. 52x30" lights + 39x15" lights + 20x5" lights, total 38 minutes

This latest M42 image was captured with Skywatcher 80EDPro and Altair Lightwave 0.8 reducer on a guided Skywatcher NEQ6 mount. Modified Canon 1100d @ ISO 1600. Lights: 2x120" + 20x30" + 2x15". Calibration: 40 flats, 20 darks, 20 dark flats, 20 bias.

Thanks for watching and clear skies!