The day was clear, the sun was shining, and I was expecting to get a good view of the 2 day old crescent moon 7° from Venus in the western sky after sunset. That was destroyed by a thick layer of clouds that rolled in about 30 minutes before sunrise. After that I figured the sky was going to be cloudy all night. Around 9pm I let the dog out and I decided to have a look up, and the sky was clear. After letting the dog in I took the Astromaster 114EQ out with hopes of getting a few images that I could stack and make into a pretty image to share here. I had some luck, but need to fine tune and learn some adjustments to be made.
The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula just below (south) Orion's Belt, and is also visible to the naked eye granted you have clear skies, and minimal light pollution. To find the M42, first find Orion's Belt, look below it for the three fainter stars almost perpendicular to the belt. The middle of the three stars is where the nebula can be found. With the unaided eye you may notice that this middle star is a bit fuzzy, and that's because of the nebula. Aim a pair of binoculars or a telescope at this and you will be amazed with how much of the nebula is visible.
At a distance of 1,344 light-years away this nebula shines quite bright through a telescope and handles magnification quite well. Although this is all that I was able to see through my telescope, this nebula is part of a much larger nebula within Orion known as the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. Inside M42 there is quite a young cluster of stars known as the Trapezium. Through my telescope the Trapezium is just visible with the 32mm eyepiece and I can resolve 3 of the stars. I didn't get the chance to magnify it anymore than that, but those three stars in the Trapezium turn into a total of six with good transparency and higher magnification.
This is a single image of M42 I took showing the Trapezium. Click to Enlarge.
Through the 32mm eyepiece M42 looks a lot like it does in my picture below. The image below was created with about 30 images stacked in Deep Sky Stacker at 3.2seconds F6.3 ISO400. Strapped the camera to the eyepiece set up a timer and let the pictures begin.
Click to Enlarge
This second image was about a total of 70 images stacked, 30 of the images were the images used in the picture above, and the rest were taken at about 6seconds F4.5 ISO400. The central region of the nebula is a bit overexposed, but you can really start to see the shape of the nebula in this image. Hopefully I have clear skies soon, and will be able to spend more than just an hour with this nebula. By the time I had captured all these images a thin layer of clouds started rolling in.
Click to Enlarge
Although the central area is overexposed I am still quite happy with the results I'm achieving with the setup I have. I finally have the tracking of the sky down to a point where I can take up to 15 second exposures and still have a decent enough picture to stack within Deep Sky Stacker, which is quite picky when it comes to even the slightest star trail. Now I just need to work on less exposure with a ton more images taken, or I need to screw around with some other settings.
EDIT: I have taken the two images and masked them in Gimp to come up with a much better image of the nebula. You can really make out the stars in the center of the nebula a bit more, and the central core of the nebula isn't as overexposed.
Click to Enlarge
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