The Great Orion Nebula (M42)
| Image taken | 11 Jan 2003, 21:00 compiled from 160 stacked images |
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| Location | Tom's back garden, near Southampton -4°C, slightly hazy |
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| Statistics |
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| Equipment used | Helios 8" newtonian reflector Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 (no lens) K3CCDTools, Registax and Photoshop |
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| Comments | This nebula is one of the brightest deep sky objects
yet is too dim to be recognisable in a single CCD frame
from the webcam, even with aggressive use of Photoshop. However, when at least 100 frames of the region are compiled with purpose-designed image stacking software (Registax), the effect is much like a single exposure of several minutes. With a considerable amount of manipulation in Photoshop the structure of the nebula can be made out. We shall repeat our attempt to image this object, only using several thousand frames instead of a couple of hundred. |