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.
An image of the Orion Nebula, M42 and M43, shot for demo purposes, taken through my standard (not Edge HD model) Celestron C9.25 inch SCT for 2300mm focal length at f/10. This was all unguided just for fun on a night I was shooting the 8-day-old Moon nearby above Orion. So this was taken in a bright moonlit sky and with light haze in the sky. This shows what is possible by stacking lots of very short though still well-exposed exposures even under less than ideal sky conditions, and with simple techniques. I used higher than normal ISOs for this to keep exposures very short to avoid trailing from the lack of guiding. However, it helps that this is the brightest nebula in the sky! The exposure blending retains the bright core and Trepezium stars while bringing what I could of the fainter tendrils that were visible in the moonlight and haze. TECHNICAL This is a stack of 32 x 6-second (!) exposures at ISO 6400, 24 x 6 seconds at ISO 3200, and 12 x 6-seconds at ISO 1600 for the core, all with the Sony a7III, and blended with luminosity masks. All alignments and stacking with Photoshop. So this did take a fair amount of skilled processing to make this look good. LENR dark frames were applied in camera to each image. This was with the Astro-Physics Mach One mount.
