Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed (AstroFckups)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Great Orion Nebula · Lower Sword · M 42 · M 43 · Mairan's Nebula · NGC 1976 · NGC 1980 · NGC 1982 · Orion Nebula · The star θ1Ori · The star θ2Ori · The star ιOri

Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed, AstroFckups

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Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed

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Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed

Stayed up very late on a clear* Friday night to capture an image of M42, which had also been my first ever astrophoto attempt when I had no idea what the heck I was doing

The Orion Nebula is such a great target and I would highly recommend it for any beginners as it's so bright and also such a beautiful target. During processing in Photoshop I combined data from two different stretches and used magic wand select/feather to make sure the Trapezium asterism of stars (a very young open star cluster) can still be seen in the usual overexposed core of the nebula. Happy with the result.

*Astrofkcup: That night was the first time I learnt that "clear" skies doesn't necessarily mean great skies. It was a very windy night and I didn't notice any issues with subs when imaging M42. But later I imagined the moon and 2/3 of the subs were useless because of atmospheric turbulence, it was a real eye opener! So I'm pretty happy with how this image of M42 turned out under those conditions. However I think we need to start a movement to change the friendly wish of "Clear Skies" to "Clear and Calm Skies"!

Clear and Calm Skies to you all.

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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.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5169314
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed

Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed

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Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed

Orion Nebula (M42) on a clear night... or so it seemed

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