Trois_Merlettes
M42: the great nebula in Orion, again and again!
M42, the great nebula in the Orion constellation can be spotted with the naked eye in the winter sky. It is an absolute favourite for amateur astronomers. But it is a real challenge for astrophotographers because of the huge difference of light intensity between the bright core and the faint nebulosity on the edges. Here, I tackled this challenge with a luminance produced as the sum of 5 series of shots with very different exposure times (3s, 9s, 30s, 300s and 900s). This is my longest project so far!. It used 6 nights, 161 photos for a total exposure of 16hours and 40 minutes during 6 different nights (all in the urban site of Aix en Provence).
Technical details:
C11-HD configured in hyperstar mode on G11 mount, auto guiding by a separate ED80 refractor.
Luminance with Halpha filter and a SXVR H-18 camera cooled at -30°C, binned 1x1.
RGB done separately last year (yes! see: www.flickr.com/photos/trois_merlettes/6574398379/in/set-7...) with narrow band filters (Hubble palette): Ha (green), SII (red), OIII (blue) and a QHY8L bin2x2 and cooled at -30°C.
Processing with MaxImDL and PixInsight.
Exposure details:
Luminance: 20x3s + 20x9s + 20x30s + 19x300s +12x900s all in Halpha
RGB: 20x600s in SII +31x600s in Ha + 19x600s in OIII
M42: the great nebula in Orion, again and again!
M42, the great nebula in the Orion constellation can be spotted with the naked eye in the winter sky. It is an absolute favourite for amateur astronomers. But it is a real challenge for astrophotographers because of the huge difference of light intensity between the bright core and the faint nebulosity on the edges. Here, I tackled this challenge with a luminance produced as the sum of 5 series of shots with very different exposure times (3s, 9s, 30s, 300s and 900s). This is my longest project so far!. It used 6 nights, 161 photos for a total exposure of 16hours and 40 minutes during 6 different nights (all in the urban site of Aix en Provence).
Technical details:
C11-HD configured in hyperstar mode on G11 mount, auto guiding by a separate ED80 refractor.
Luminance with Halpha filter and a SXVR H-18 camera cooled at -30°C, binned 1x1.
RGB done separately last year (yes! see: www.flickr.com/photos/trois_merlettes/6574398379/in/set-7...) with narrow band filters (Hubble palette): Ha (green), SII (red), OIII (blue) and a QHY8L bin2x2 and cooled at -30°C.
Processing with MaxImDL and PixInsight.
Exposure details:
Luminance: 20x3s + 20x9s + 20x30s + 19x300s +12x900s all in Halpha
RGB: 20x600s in SII +31x600s in Ha + 19x600s in OIII