M 42, The Great Orion Nebula
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Luminance: 11 x 300 sec layered with 30 x 30 for central region , RGB 10 x 150 each binned 2x2, layered with 10 x 60 for central region. Autoguided on 01/3-9/07.
Equipment: 6" newtonian astrograph at f/3.9 and SXV-H9 camera mounted on a G-11.
Processing: Combined in Maxim D/L, processed in Photoshop CS and with Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools.
This is a difficult image to process because there is so much dynamic range in both the luminance and color layers. I layered in shorter exposures to get around the blown out area around the trapezium. As you can see, the seeing wasn't great, so the trapezium stars are not resolved in this image. Still, what an amazing place!