The Witchhead Nebula is a very faint reflection Nebula, near the bright star Rigel in Orion. My existing camera needed to be binned 2x2 to pick up the faint detail, so this became a black and white version. The nebula is actual blue colored when captured in color. Equipment: Canon 550D (astro-modified, clear glass filter) Software Bisque MyT Mount Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8 Unguided Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8 Lightroom CC Light Frames: 14 x 300 secs, binned 2x2 (1 hr 10 mins) 2 x 240 secs (8 mins) Total 1 hr 18 mins Dark Frames: 10 x 300 secs (50 mins) Additional Frames: Bias - 30 No Flats From Wikipedia: IC 2118 (also known as Witch Head Nebula due to its shape), is an extremely faint reflection nebula believed to be an ancient supernova remnant or gas cloud illuminated by nearby supergiant star Rigel in Orion. It lies in the Eridanus constellation, about 900 light-years from Earth. The nature of the dust particles, reflecting blue light better than red, is a factor in giving the Witch Head its blue color.
The sun peeks out through mist and clouds right at sunrise. Taken from our Many Glacier Hotel 3rd floor balcony!
M42 at Prime Focus Went back and tried again for M42, this time using a Meade 8" SCT as my 'camera lens'. This shot is an HDR composite made from 3 individual 'stacks' of shots (processed using DeepSkyStacker), then post processed in Photoshop CS4 and then Photomatix, to try to mitigate the very high dynamic range of M42 4 x 6 min @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 21 x 3 min @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 5 x 1 min @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 8 x 20 sec @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer 11 x 10 sec @ ISO 800 w/ f6.3 focal reducer There was additional post processing applied using Irfanview and Photoshop CS4 to the final HDR output. I am still learning about the post processing tricks, having gotten a lot of help form some friends on various forums. I may update this image in the future if I get another version I like more, but this one is not too bad for a beginner like me :o)
