M42, the great Orion Nebula with M43 and the running man - 50% pixel view
click the image for a 100% pixel view of the center and trapezium, or HERE to return to the index page

It has been a long time since I visited this wonderful part ot the sky.... years, I think. No surprise, it is still here. The group is often called the sword of orion. The rebulosity is a great combination of emission (mostly H-II) and reflection with some other ionized things too. It is a challenge to show both the detail of the trapezium stars and the outer dust due to the extreme luminosity range. I used exposure times of 1, 10, 120, and 300 seconds for this effort. My plan to add some 600 second subs should bring more out of the background. North is to the left in this presentation, and is still a work in progress. I plan Ha and a longer set of subs to fill the bakcground a bit more and smooth out the noise. Check the largest cropped view for the finer details on the trapezium and filmy dust lanes on the north edge of the bowl.

Telescope	Explore Scientific David H. Levy Comet Hunter Maksutov-Newtonian 152mm f/4.8 mounted piggyback on Meade LX 200 Classic 12 inch
Camera	Canon XT/350d modified with Baader type 1 filter by Hap Griffin
Exposure	30 subs at 1 second, 30 subs at 10 seconds, 5 subs at 120 seconds, and 26 subs at 300 seconds. total time 145 minutes.
Guiding	PHD Guide from Stark labs with Meade DSI pro I on Meade 12-inch LX 200 Classic at f/3.3
Software	Images acquired, calibrated, stacked and color corrected with Nebulosity 2.2.4 from Stark Labs. Stacking of the sub-groups using layer masking and further processing in Photoshop CS 3.
on-line links to more information	too many to list here, google works well...

December 1, 2010 - Julian CA