Orion Nebula and Horsehead Nebula

Orion nebula and Horsehead nebula in Hydrogen Alpha. I used a Canon 75-300mm lens set to 100mm at about f6 attached to a cooled CCD camera via an Geoptik adaptor. This image was consists of 15 x 300 second exposures unbinned that were also unguided.

The Orion nebula has always been tricky as it’s core is so bright. This was still a problem in this widefield image, as Orion is still bright and the Horsehead is very dark. I still used DPP in Maxim DL when processing this, then just tweaked the levels, brightness, contrast and sharpened it in Photoshop.

Orion Nebula and Pleiades Images

Managed to get out last night at about 9.30pm until Midnight. With so many great sights in the sky at the moment in January it’s hard to know what to try and image first.

M1 Crab Nebula, M45 Pleiades, Mars, M42 Orion Nebula, Horsehead Nebula etc.

At the moment I love connecting my Canon 450D up to my £100 refractor guide scope. I just find it so easy to use and focus compare to the LX200. The worst thing on the LX200 is not seeing where you are when focusing. I like to see the drawtube on the refractor.

I ended up taking the pleiades and the orion nebula with the 70mm refractor.