K3's Astronomy - Deep Sky

	"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have set in place, what is Man that You are mindful of him?" -- Psalm 8:3,4
	K3's Astronomy - Deep Sky

M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion

Click the picture to see full resolution photo (972x676 pixels, 4.05"/pixel).

M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion. 11.01.2003 (22:23-00:09 UT)
Resolution: 8.1 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Nikon Coolpix 995, f=22.4mm
Telescope: 80mm F5 Refractor, 25mm eyepiece afocal
Result focal length: 358.4mm (~44X Zoom)
Result focal ratio: F4.48
Exposure: 63x28s + 20x14s + 17x7s,
(ISO400, sunny white balance), Noise Reduction
Camera control: The Force software
Processed by K3CCDTools, then in Corel PhotoPaint.
Seeing: windy, soft fog, Moon in first quarter, temperature -8°C

This is my first photo of M42 with digital camera. Unfortunately I didn't take Flat Field frames. I created artificial Flat Field from Pleiades photo. The 4 bright stars of Pleiades caused artifacts in Flat Field and consecutively in M42 result frame. Also Moon in first quarter wiped faint details.
M43 is also visible.

Processing details:
1, Aligned and summed in K3CCDTools
2, Histogram stretching and gamma 2.0 in K3CCDTools
3, Brightness - Contrast - Intensity in Corel PhotoPaint (9,21,0)
4, Color Balance (10, 0 , 0) - emphasized red channel
5, Cut low end of histogram

Click the image to see the full size (1.74"/pixel).	M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion. 12.12.2002 (00:08 UT) Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC2 with 0.60FR Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian Result focal ratio: F3.6 Exposure: 50x5s (gain 100%), no DF Captured and processed by K3CCDTools I use Auto white balance, so it has now nicer colors (at least for me ;-)). Processing details: 1, summed in K3CCDTools 2, gamma 1.50 3, unsharp mask (2, 0, 150)
	M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion. 04.02.2002 (20:38 UT) Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC at prime focus with 0.60FR Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian Result focal ratio: F3.6 Exposure: 76x8s (gain 50%), 20xDF The very nice nebula in constellation of Orion. Click the image to see the full size (1.74"/pixel).
	M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion. 04.02.2002 (21:01 UT) Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC at prime focus with 0.60FR Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian Result focal ratio: F3.6 Exposure: 11x16s (gain 80%), 12xDF The same evening, longer exposure (16s). Click the image to see the full size (1.74"/pixel).
	M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion. 04.02.2002 (21:06 UT) Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC at prime focus with 0.60FR Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian Result focal ratio: F3.6 Exposure: 8x24s (gain 80%), 10xDF The same evening, even longer exposure 24s. Click the image to see the full size (1.74"/pixel).
	Effect of exposure on details and saturation. Short exposure shows nicely Trapezium region, but doesn't reveal faint details of nebula. Long exposure shows nicely faint details of nebula, but overexposes Trapezium region.
	Combination of 8s and 24s exposures. Two layers picture was created in PhotoPaint. The bottom layer was 8s exposure, the top was 24s exposure. The overexposed central part of 24s exposure was cut in PhotoPaint (with feather) and through the "hole" the bottom 8s exposure part was visible. Some brightness, contrast, intensisty tuning was done and the result picture is here! Click the image to see the full size (1.74"/pixel).
	Trapezium region of M42. 04.02.2002 (21:42 UT) Resolution: 0.96 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC + 2X Barlow Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian Result focal ratio: F12 Exposure: 24x1.5s (gain 100%), no DF Small hint of E component in Trapezium is visible Click the image to see the full size (0.48"/pixel).
	M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion. 11.11.2001 (1:00 UT) Resolution: 46.2 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC at photo tripod Objective: 2/50 Flexon Exposure: 25x2s (gain 100%), 25xDF Seeing: lim.magnitude for naked eye 4.5 The very nice nebula in constellation of Orion. Click the image to see the full size (23.1"/pixel).

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Last Update: 15.12.2002