Amazing Sky by Alan Dyer

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M42 Unguided Eyepiece View (C9 Sony - March 14, 2019).jpg

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An image of the Orion Nebula, M42 and M43, shot for demo purposes, taken through my standard (not Edge HD model) Celestron C9.25 inch SCT for 2300mm focal length at f/10. Converted to simulate a view through an eyepiece of a modest to large aperture telescope.

This was all unguided just for fun on a night I was shooting the 8-day-old Moon nearby above Orion. So this was taken in a bright moonlit sky and with light haze in the sky. This shows what is possible by stacking lots of very short though still well-exposed exposures even under less than ideal sky conditions, and with simple techniques. I used higher than normal ISOs for this to keep exposures very short to avoid trailing from the lack of guiding.

However, it helps that this is the brightest nebula in the sky!

The exposure blending retains the bright core and Trepezium stars while bringing what I could of the fainter tendrils that were visible in the moonlight and haze.

TECHNICAL
This is a stack of 32 x 6-second (!) exposures at ISO 6400, 24 x 6 seconds at ISO 3200, and 12 x 6-seconds at ISO 1600 for the core, all with the Sony a7III, and blended with luminosity masks. All alignments and stacking with Photoshop. So this did take a fair amount of skilled processing to make this look good. LENR dark frames were applied in camera to each image. This was with the Astro-Physics Mach One mount.
Copyright
© 2019 Alan Dyer
Image Size
5739x3857 / 2.0MB
www.amazingsky.photoshelter.com
Contained in galleries
Simulated Naked-Eye and Eyepiece Views
An image of the Orion Nebula, M42 and M43, shot for demo purposes, taken through my standard (not Edge HD model) Celestron C9.25 inch SCT for 2300mm focal length at f/10. Converted to simulate a view through an eyepiece of a modest to large aperture telescope.<br /> <br /> This was all unguided just for fun on a night I was shooting the 8-day-old Moon nearby above Orion. So this was taken in a bright moonlit sky and with light haze in the sky. This shows what is possible by stacking lots of very short though still well-exposed exposures even under less than ideal sky conditions, and with simple techniques. I used higher than normal ISOs for this to keep exposures very short to avoid trailing from the lack of guiding. <br /> <br /> However, it helps that this is the brightest nebula in the sky! <br /> <br /> The exposure blending retains the bright core and Trepezium stars while bringing what I could of the fainter tendrils that were visible in the moonlight and haze. <br /> <br /> TECHNICAL<br /> This is a stack of 32 x 6-second (!) exposures at ISO 6400, 24 x 6 seconds at ISO 3200, and 12 x 6-seconds at ISO 1600 for the core, all with the Sony a7III, and blended with luminosity masks. All alignments and stacking with Photoshop. So this did take a fair amount of skilled processing to make this look good. LENR dark frames were applied in camera to each image. This was with the Astro-Physics Mach One mount.