The Orion Nebula: An update

After a couple of months break from astrophotography, I decided I had to do some more photography before spring ended. After coming up with a few options for what to photograph, I finally decided on what to photograph, the Orion Nebula. I have photographed it many before, but I was never quite happy with the quality of the image, which is why I decided to try again last week. I also didn’t have the opportunity to go to a dark site, so I was kind of limited to taking pictures of the brightest DSOs (Deep Sky Objects).

After having dinner, I set up my camera in my backyard and started taking shots. The temperature was in the mid-30s, so after a while, my hands started getting really cold and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to take as many shots as I wanted, and had to go inside earlier. To make matters worse, I realized that my intervalometer was only taking half the shots it said it would, so I had to change its settings. Despite this, I was able to get around 570 light frames, 30 dark frames, and 40 bias frames; This was far more than I had ever taken for the Orion Nebula, so I was excited.

I went to sleep, and the next day I put the images in Deep Sky Stacker. It took a couple of hours to stack them, but once that was done, I took my first shot at editing it.

I brightened up the image and tried to make the nebula as bright as I could. The picture came out pretty well, but a lot of detail was washed out by the brightness, and the image was very noisy. Considering everything, the image was still better than anything I took before.

The image before editing, and after editing

After a couple of days, I tried again, this time with the hope of getting a less noisy image. I went easier on the stretching and tried to avoid vignetting. It came out much better and cleaner, and the details were also sharper. I tried again one more time this Monday, but the image came out too dim.

My best picture of Orion so far

My last edit of the Orion Nebula, the image was just a bit too dim

I probably won’t try doing Orion again this year, especially since it’s already April, and might try focusing on new targets like the Leo Triplet, or the Double Cluster. I have recently started an Instagram page where I will frequently be posting my pics, feel free to check it out. I hope that you all are enjoying my blog. Clear Skies!