M42-Great Orion Nebula on 2/23/08
I’ve imaged the Orion Nebula a very large number of times, particularly with my DSI cameras. I hadn’t had access to the Nikon D50 DSLR camera for a while (it belongs to my office) and so I had never used the camera on deep sky objects before. I also had not (until the eclipse) used it on my new telescope, the LXD75. I knew it would have a broader field of view, but how much broader, I really had no idea until I tried it. I took a several guided (using my Meade 70AZ-A as a guide scope with my DSI) 2 minute images of the Orion Nebula and then stacked them in DeepSkyStacker. I was extremely pleased with the result, particularly since this only represents 6 images. Normally I stack many more than that to get more detail. I need to try this camera out on some other objects to see what it’s capable of, but if it holds up, I may wind up selling my DSI II and buying a DSLR just for astrophotography. This is the best image of M42 I’ve ever made. I can’t wait to take more.
Unfortunately, while taking some image of M45-The Pleiades, I realized that while I had brought my dew shield out to the telescope, I’d never put it on and the scope was starting to frost over. I guess further imaging will have to wait until another night.
Update: I reprocessed the image, this time, using flat frames, dark frames and bias frames (technical stuff that help me get a better image). I focused on just the main nebula and worked to bring out the detail and this was the result:
A reprocessed, cropped version of the above M42 image
There’s a lot more detail there and I believe that if I can get a few more long exposures, I should have a really, really nice image.
