The Orion Nebula
02-Dec-2016
The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, visible to the naked eye. It is seen as the fuzzy middle star in the sword of Orion. The nebula is 1344 light years away and is one of the closest star forming regions to Earth.
Image:
- 19x 240s Luminance bin1x1 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 16x 60s Luminance bin1x1 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 9x 120s Red bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 7x 30s Red bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 8x 120s Green bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 10x 30s Green bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 9x 120s Blue bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 8x 30s Blue bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
Total exposure 2 hours 36 minutes.
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120
- SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Typ 2c LRGB
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
- Captured with AstroArt 6
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- FocusLock live focusing
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, combine RGB.
- Photoshop CC: Curves, high pass filter, merge L+RGB, minimum filter, color adjustment, saturation.