The nebulas of Orion in the Belt and Sword of Orion area. Including M42, Orion Nebula 9below centre), Barnard's Loop (at left), M78 (small reflection nebula above centre), Horsehead Nebula (centre) and NGC 2024 (above Horsehead). There is faint reflection nebulosity at right -- the frame does not extend right far enough to show the Witchhead Nebula near Rigel. This is a stack of 10 x 7 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the Canon 135mm L series lens and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 640. One exposure had soft stars from high altitude haze which added the glows around stars naturally. Shot from Coonabarabran, Australia, December 14/15, 2012. This is a better version than #1 shot the night before under some haze and cloud.
The Milky Way of a late May night, in 2017, with Saturn amid the Milky Way at right, near the dark lanes of the Dark Horse. SHot from home in Alberta (latitude 51° N) as part of a time-lapse sequence testing the Star Adventurer Mini tracker and motion controller. Messier 6 star cluster, one of the most southerly Messier objects is just above the trees at right. The Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (aka M24) and Scutum Star Cloud (above) are the bright patches in the Milky Way. The Lagoon Nebula, M8, is the pink patch below M24. This is a single 22-second exposure at f/2.2 and ISO 3200 with the Canon 6D and 35mm lens, one frame from a motion-control panning sequence.
A widefield view of Orion's Belt and Sword showing the complex of nebulosity in the area. The three Belt stars are at top (L to R): Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, with the dark Horsehead Nebula (B33) below Alnitak. Above Alnitak is the pinkish Flame Nebula, NGC 2024. At bottom are Messiers 42 and 43, making up the Orion Nebula, with the bluish Running Man Nebula above it, aka NGC 1973-5-7. Above it is the star cluster NGC 1981. Messier 78 is just on frame at upper left. Numerous other bits of emission and reflection nebulas populate the field amid a backdrop of faint emission nebulosity. The stars around the Belt belong to the large star cluster Collinder 70. This is a blend of two stacks of images: 15 x 8 minutes through an IDAS NBX dual narrowband filter to bring out the faint nebulosity, and 15 x 4-minutes with no filter for the more natural star colours and colours of the Orion, Flame and Horsehead (IC 434) Nebulas. So a total of 3 hours of exposure time. I did not take shorter exposures for the Orion Nebula core. All were with the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrograph at f/4.9 and filter-modified (by AstroGear) Canon EOS R at ISO 3200 for the filtered shots and ISO 800 for the unfiltered shots. Taken from home January 22, 2023 on a rare clear winter night. Autoguided and dithered with the Lacerta MGEN3 autoguider. No darks or LENR employed. All stacking, alignment and masking in Photoshop. Luminosity masks with Lumenzia helped bring out the nebulosity, as did a mild application of the Nebula FIlter action in the PhotoKemi StarTools Actions set. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. The filtered set has had all the stars removed using RC-Astro Star XTerminator, so it contributed just the nebulosity, Stars come from the unfiltered set for tighter stars with more natural colours.
