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Great Orion Nebula, film negative

The famous Orion Nebula, Messier 42, captured on Fuji 200 film negative. Single 90 minute exposure on a tracking mount (iOptron HAE29) though my Pentax 105 SDP (670 mm focal length) telescope. I used a Nikon F80 camera. This was scanned with Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED negative scanner - the nebula has a huge dynamic range, I had to make three separate scans to capture the detail in the bright center, so it wouldn't appear blown out. I combined them in PS, then made some "modern" adjustments in PixInsight - background extraction and a little bit of NoiseXterminator and BlurXterminator. After this I did some corves adjustments in PS. if you're pixel peeping, you will see some processing artifacts, but for this first attempt I'm very satisfied. Stacking several exposures should make a difference.

 

Note that this is cropped - it's a 2x1.3 degree field of view, while the full frame is 3x2 degrees.

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Uploaded on October 11, 2024