This is not my first go at the Orion Nebula, but it's such a beautiful target for winter viewing, and imaging it's hard to not want take more pictures of it when you see it every year. Even visually this is one of the best looking objects in the sky, along with Andromeda. It just seems like every time I look at M42 I see detail I missed in the past due to light pollution, or a bit of clouds. Winter is a great time to do deep sky observations because they are such cold crisp nights, especially here in the Adirondacks. Summer observing brings a lot of great objects, but I always seem to battle a slight haze, or have more dew issues in the summer than the winter.
So, to get into some of the details of this image. I took a bit of a different route with imaging M42 this year. Typically in the past I'd go out and get 50 images at 30 seconds a piece, stack them, edit them, and be done with it. This time I have multiple exposures mixed in from two different nights of imaging. I also have quite a few of each exposure:
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| M42 - February 09, 2019 |
So, to get into some of the details of this image. I took a bit of a different route with imaging M42 this year. Typically in the past I'd go out and get 50 images at 30 seconds a piece, stack them, edit them, and be done with it. This time I have multiple exposures mixed in from two different nights of imaging. I also have quite a few of each exposure:
60 images at 15 seconds, 60 dark frames, 30 flat frames, 100 bias frames
70 images at 2 minutes, 60 dark frames, 30 flat frames, 100 bias frames
The data used is from February 9, 2019 I took the 15 second and the 2 minute images. So in total in this image I have 2.25 hours worth of light frame data. I originally was going to include 200 images at 45 seconds, but PixInsight couldn't handle incorporating that data (when creating the drizzle files, I know I could have not done drizzle, but I really like the results when it's used). Kept causing it to crash due to running out of memory. If/When I get more memory in my computer I might give it another go with that data added into it. Adding that would bring the data to a little over 5 hours total, so I'm sure that would be great for detail, and for a reduction in noise.
Previously when I have imaged M42 I was using a Newtonian reflector, and the biggest problem with multiple night images with that was trying to align the diffraction spikes, which never worked out. I'm sure there are people out there that do it, but I was not one of those people. Now that I have been imaging with a 8" SCT I haven't had to worry about those diffraction spikes, but I had to sacrifice some of my FOV. I have been considering attempting a mosaic of objects that are too large for this telescope, even with a focal reducer. Not having diffraction spikes is making feel like I can achieve more results even with a smaller FOV.
Gear:
Celestron 8" SCT
CG-5 Advanced Series Go-To
Orion Starshoot Autoguider
Stock Canon T3i
Gear:
Celestron 8" SCT
CG-5 Advanced Series Go-To
Orion Starshoot Autoguider
Stock Canon T3i
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