The Orion Nebula, aka Messier 42, at centre, with the blue Running Man Nebula (NGC 1973-5-7) above it. The smaller nebula attached to the top edge of M42 is M43. The blue star cluster at top above the Running Man is NGC 1981; the loose star cluster below M42 is NGC 1980. This is a stack of 8 x 5-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra mirrorless camera at ISO 800 unfiltered, blended with a stack of 6 x 8-minute exposures at ISO 1600 but through the dual-band Optolong L-Enhance filter that records the faint red nebulosity very well. Blending and masking the filtered with the unfiltered shots allows the faint red nebulosity to come through while retaining the blues, magentas and even subtle greens of the bright nebulosity and the blue of the hot stars as recorded by the “white-light” images. These two sets of long exposures are blended using luminosity masks with a set of 6 x 60-second exposures and 4 x 30-second exposures, both at ISO 400, for recording the bright core of M42 with its Trapezium stars that would otherwise be overexposed into a bright mass with only long exposures. The short exposures were all unfiltered. I applied a high-pass sharpening filter to snap up contrast in the dark lanes. All were through the SharpStar HNT150 Hyperbolic Newtonian Astrograph at its native fast focal ratio of f/2.8. for a focal length of 420mm. Taken from home January 28, 2020. All stacked, aligned and blended in Photoshop 2020. PS’s Auto-Align function aligned all 24 images in one fell swoop in less than a minute.
NGC 281, the Pacman Nebula, in Cassiopeia, taken from home November 21, 2016, as part of testing of the Explore Scientific FCD100 102mm apo refractor. This is a stack of 5 x 6-minute exposures at f/7 with the ES field flattener, and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. The bright star is Alpha Cassiopeiae, aka Schedir. North is to the left here, to produce a nice composition in portrait mode and with the “pacman” figure more obvious.
The Lambda Centauri complex, also known as the Running Chicken Nebula IC 2948 (at left) and above it the Pearl Cluster (NGC 3766). Just right of centre is the open cluster IC 2714 ad below it the small barely resolve cluster Mel 105. To the upper right is the nebula complex NGC 3576/81. This is a rich area of sky to explore with binoculars or a low-power telescope with exccellent contrasts between rich starfields and dark nebulas. This is a stack of 4 x 10 minute exposures at f/4.3 with the Borg 77mm astrograph (330mm focal length) and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800. Taken from Coonabarabran, Australia, March 2014.
