The Orion Nebula complex consisting of M42, M43 and the reflection nebula area known as the Running Man Nebula, NGC 1973-5-7. NGC 1981 is the blue star cluster at top north edge. North is up, though in the sky from Australia where this was shot the object appeared upside down compared to this northern-centric view. This is a 3-exposure stack to preserve details in the bright core while bringing out the faint outlying parts. It is a stack of 4 x 1 minute + 4 x 5 minutes + 4 x 15 minutes, all at ISO 400 with the Canon 5D MkII (filter-modified) and Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm apo refractor at f/5.8 with the 6x7 field flattener. Images were aligned and masked in Photoshop CS6 using Refine Mask. An HDR stack did not work and produced odd artifacts. Images had to be manally stacked and masked. Shot from Timor Cottage, Coonabarabran, Australia, December 12/13, 2012.
The Orion Nebula, Messier 42, one of the brightest nebulas in the sky, glowing brightly like an island amid the much fainter clouds of stardust and gas that pervades the region. The bright young stars at the core of the nebula (here overexposed) light up the nearby gas clouds. The area is also filled with clusters of hot blue stars, such as NGC 1981 at top and NGC 1980 at bottom. Just above the main mass of the Orion Nebula is the blueish “Running Man Nebula,” the reflection nebula NGC 1975. Some faint parallel streaks runnign horizontally across the image are trails from geostationary satellites that did not completely subtract when stacking the images in Median Combine mode as each frame had trails. This is a stack of 10 x 6 minute exposures with the TMB 92mm apo refractor at f/4.4 with the Borg 0.85x field flattener/reducer and the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800. Taken from New Mexico, Nov 27, 2014, U.S. Thanksgiving Day.
The Pleiades, aka Messier 45, embedded in the dusty nebulosity the star cluster is passing through in Taurus. The dust clouds are illuminated by light from the hot young blue stars. This is a stack of just 12 x 4-minute exposures, as incoming Earth clouds spoiled some frames and prevented more exposures. Even so, some high haze hampered some of the images used in the final set. All were with the Starfield Optics Géar115 f/7 apo refractor taken as part of testing the scope, with its 0.8x Adjustable Reducer for f/5.6 and with the stock 45-megapixel Canon R5 at ISO 800. Autoguided and dithered with the MGEN3 autoguider on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. No dark frames or LENR applied on this mild night in November. I brought out the faint dust clouds with the application of luminosity masks created with Lumenzia extension panel in Photoshop, plus an application of the Nebula Filter action from the Photokemi Star Tools action set on a separate stamped layer and blended into the final image. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. All stacking, alignment and processing in Photoshop.
