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Messier 42

The Orion Nebula

Messier 42, the Orion Nebula, is located in the Orion constellation, and is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky. In low light polluted locations it can even be seen with the naked eye. It is 1,344 light years from Earth and is around 24 light years across.


I was looking back through some of my old Bortle 9, non-filtered, DSLR data and decided to process this using what I’ve learned from @gibsonpics and guests on Twitch. I think it turned out pretty good. In fact, it's one of my favorite.

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One of my favorite features of the Orion Nebula is the trapezium cluster found in the heart of the nebula, so I had to make sure it was visible in the photo. It was discovered on February 4, 1617 by Galileo Galilei. How he found anything in that telescope of his amazes me. And, the funny thing is, he didn’t even see the nebula itself, just 3 of the stars in the cluster!

Target: Orion Nebula

Imaging Date: February 16, 2020

Location: DFW, TX

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Acquisition Equipment Used:

Celestron EdgeHD 925 OTA

Celestron CGX Mount

Celestron 0.7x Reducer

Nikon D750 DSLR

BackyardNIKON Imaging Software

ZWO ASI120MM-S Guide Camera

PHD2 Guiding Software

Bahtinov Mask for manual focus

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Images Taken:

36 x 300 second light frames

20 x 300 second dark frames

20 flat frames

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Processing Software Used:

DeepSkyStacker for stacking all frames

PixInsight for stretching and processing

Topaz Studio 2 for processing

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This equipment and more can be found at OPTcorp.com.

© 2021 OvertheSunASTRO

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