Great Orion Nebula in HɑRGB

Famous Orion Nebula (Messier 42) in Hα narrowband and RGB broadband from the premises of the CERN Astronomy Club. Unfortunately near full moon.

 

I chose shorter exposure time of 120s with the Hα filter to not blow out the core and Trapezium located there. That way it was sufficient to use only one exposure time (120s).

Sharpless 279, the Running Man nebula, is visible at the top but since the luminance comes from Hα, it does not look much like a man!

 

📅 12 Jan 2025

🌕 99 %

📍 CERN Astronomy Club (Bortle 5)

 

🔭 Evostar 80ED, x0.85 reducer

⚙️ ZWO AM5

🎯 Evoguide 50ED, ASI120mm mini, ASIAir Plus

📷 ASI2600mm Pro with ZWO EFW II and Antlia V-Pro LRGB / 7 nm narrowband filters.

 

⏳ 3.7 h total

H-α: 100 x 120s

R/G/B: each 10 x 120 s

 

🎨 Processed in PixInsight with final touch in GIMP.

Stacking: WBPP.

H-α processing: GradientCorrection, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, SetiAstro's StatisticalStretch, HDRMT (core), Curves, NoiseXTerminator.

RGB processing: GraXpert, BlurXTerminator (correct only), SPCC, StarXTerminator, Statistical Stretch, HDRMT (core), GHS.

HRGB processing: LRGBCombination, additional GHS. Reduced colornoise with MMT on chrominance channel.

RGB stars: SetiAstro's StarStretch.

GIMP: Screened stars on HRGB, final color correction.

Done