The orion nebula is HDR

[moonshinegnomie]

M42 the orion nebula. I had to use 3 diffferent exposure times to avoid blowing out whats called the trapezium,the 4 stars in the brightest part of the nebula

I used 50 300seconds exposures,60 60 second ones and 60 10 second ones.
i stacked each exposure length sepreatly then combined them into an HDR before stretching the image to bring out the details

[John1956PA]

1. Your High Def. Resolution photo of M42 is the best I have seen.

In looking at the images which come up on a web search, I can find no other image which shows the details of the "turkey head" (my silly term) with the background wisps. Gathering the shots, layering and knitting them, and then formatting took a great deal of patience and skill. Thank you for sharing this marvelous image.

As an aside, I will mention something you probably already know, but maybe some DUers do not. The "M" numbering for nebulae go back to the French astronomer Messier. He was looking for comets. Whenever he discovered a non-comet blurry patch (which he would regard as a nuisance) he gave it a number. As astronomy evolved, it became apparent that the blurry patches (i.e., nebulae) were more important than comets. Hence, Messier's identification system for nebulae is used to this day.

[moonshinegnomie]

2. messier objects arent just nebula

clusters and galaxies also have M numbers.

[oldfart73]

3. The process is as fascinating as the target.

[moonshinegnomie]

6. this is teh complete process after i capture the images

all in pixinsight

1) stack the images separately (along with special calibration images)
2)remove the background (basically neutralizes any gradients from stray light and general sky glow
3) noise removal
4) merge teh images into an HDR
5) deconvolution (basically like sharpening)
6) color correction. basically adjusts the white balance according to teh actual spectroscopic view of the target)
7) deconvolution a second time (the pixinsight process I use does it in 2 steps when you use teh spectroscopic color correction)
8) stretch the image. basically brings out the nebula from the background.
9) I use whats called hdr multi scale trarnsformation which is a pixinsight process that can enhance details in teh nebula
10) curves transformation to bring out more color from teh nebula
11) whats called scnr in pixinsight to remove a greenish color cast that appears in a lot of images since teh sensor in a dslr is more sensitive to green

then i move the image to photoshop
1) curves adjustment to enhance contrast
2) camera raw for final tweaks

[Tarzanrock]

4. What lens or telescope did you use?

If you save the photo and enlarge it 600x -- it appears that you can see 4 stars within the Trapezium.

[moonshinegnomie]

5. yep there are 4 stars visible there.

thats what i wsa trying not to blow out.

I used a astrotech 72 edii telescope which is effectivly a 340mm f5 lens,an optolong l-enhance filter which works great on enbulas in light polluted areas and an astro modded sony a6300 camera which basically means it had the ir filter removed from over teh sensor and replaced with clear glass. an unmodded camea blocks a lot of teh light given off by nebulas since its in the deep red part of teh spectrum