M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

One of the most iconic celestial objects, the Freat Orion Nebula located just south of the Orion's belt about 1350 light years away from earth. It's one of the brightest nebualae and it is even visible with the naked eye. It was one of my bucket list targets, it is very challenging to capture and process beacuse of how bright it is, to make the core visible i had to do an HDR Composition by merging 5 and 60 seconds exposures of Luminance data. In the bottom of the image is also visible the Running man nebula (NGC1977).

I captured the image in visible light (RGB) so natural colors and was taken from my home terrace in Ragusa, Italy over 3 nights.

 

Integration:

- L 66x5s

- L 85x60s

- R 79x60s

- G 139x60s

- B 56x60s

Temp: -10C

Bin: 2x2

Gain: 120

 

Calibration:

- Darks 33

- DarkFlats 33

- Flats 33

 

Tecnosky SLD80mm (FL: 480mm) Apo Triplet Owl Series

ZWO ASI294MM Pro Cooled Camera

Tecnosky Flattener/Reducer 0.8X

ZWO EWF 7x36

Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox Advance

Pegasus Astro FocusCube 2

Antlia LRGB V-series Filter 36mm unmounted

Skywatcher EQ6R-PRO

 

Shot from my home terrace in Ragusa, Italy (Bortle 6)

Astrobin Full Res Link: www.astrobin.com/mbkhpo/

 

Done