Given the limited amount of sleep I’ve gotten recently, I was surprised and how energized I was last night. I came close to pulling an all-nighter. Skies were incredible. Very clear, very transparent and pretty steady. I’d gotten some telescope alignment work done earlier in the week and was eager to see what kind of improvements this would provide. The alignment techniques will be covered in a future post. I just wanted to get out and play last night. I figured that since Orion was already high in the southeast, that I’d start there.

The Orion Nebula, for those unfamiliar with it, is without a doubt, the most amazing deep sky object visible in amateur telescopes. Ok, the most amazing object for folks in the northern hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy, star-like object. In even a modest pair of binoculars, it clearly is an object that requires extensive time to survey. Telescopes in the 6-10″ range will crawl inside it. The bright stars of the Trapezium anchor the center of the nebula, the expanse of which seems to extend to greater and greater distances as aperture is increased. In the 25″ under dark skies, it simply fills the eyepiece from edge to edge. Darker sections within the nebula have more detail than most nebula in their own right. You could literally spend the evening observing Orion at various levels of magnification and continue to find previously unseen detail. Orion is just now becoming an evening observing target. Folks should plan their observing around this beauty. Even low to the horizon, it’ll knock your socks off… though it is surely best to let it climb into the higher realms of the sky to fully appreciate all that it has to offer. If you don’t have a telescope worthy of such a beauty, I’d recommend finding a friend or an area star party to view it through the largest instrument possible.

The accompanying image is the result of (10) x 60 second exposures at ISO400 shooting at prime focus through the AP. These were subsequently stacked using RegiStax. I made use of the Gamma feature on the Wavelet tab. This is one feature that I’ll need to better understand. This feature literally pulled an incredible amount of detail from the provided data. Next, I pulled the image into PhotoShop where I applied an Unsharp Mask and a quick resize. The result is the image you’re now seeing. Click on the image to view it at higher resolution. You can also checkout my first images of the Orion Nebula elsewhere on this site.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: M42 - The Orion Nebula
* Type: Nebulous Star Cluster
* Constellation: Orion
* Magnitude: 4
* Size: 65′

Astro Photo Processing Details

* 10 x 60s exposures at ISO400
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Neat Image
* Photo Shop Levels

1. Brian, November 5, 2007:

   You’re getting some great results! Nice work.

2. Alan, November 6, 2007:

   GREAT image. Just picked up a Rebel XTi last week and looking forward to getting to know it. Like the blog very much, too. Keep up the nice work.

3. admin, November 6, 2007:

   Thanks for the kind words. I’m hoping to greatly out do these in the days ahead