M42 - The Orion Nebula

01:44 9/10/2005 UTC

I have to admit this is so far the most difficult image to process. I have terrible light pollution in the low southern sky and it was very hard to get color balance right and avoid clipping the image in stacking. However given the conditions the image turned out quite nice! Geez this should be fantastic from dark sky location! I have strange dust blob in the optical path somewhere which I edited out from the image. Either I need to start taking flats or clean that blob away...

Camera: Canon EOS 350D (Rebel XT) | Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 66mm f6 petzval refractor | Mount: Orion Skyview Pro, Boxdoerfer PowerFlex MTS-3SLP drive controller | Exposure: 17x90s(25m30s) f6 ISO800, 11 darks, no flats | Software: IRIS, GIMP | Location: 60°31'N 26°52'E (Koivula/Kotka,FI)