M42, the Orion Nebula

[Diane_Miller]

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

This is another one from last week, when we had a very unusual run of clear nights near the new moon. This was a short night as the object wasn’t above the trees to the east until 7:30, and clouds came in later, so I only got 83 1-minute exposures, but it was a better result than earlier attempts wit this target, from 2023, before I had an autofocuser. Managing the very high dynamic range during stretching is a challenge here as the center Trapezium area is intensely bright and the surrounding nebulosity very faint. Star removal and then the Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch process worked very well, then the stars stretched the same way and recombined.

Specific Feedback

All comments welcome!

Technical Details

I’ll spare you the onerous details!! But of interest is that this is about a 50% crop, so about equivalent to an 800-900 mm lens on a full-frame camera. The object on the left is the Running Man nebula.

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[Allen_Brooks]

Enjoying these images, Diane. Lots of cyan in this one-different filters for different elements?

[Diane_Miller]

Thanks, @Allen_Brooks! I don’t use filters – each image is run through a process in PixInsight called Spectrophotometric Color Calibration, which matches the actual stars in the field and corrects overall color to give them the correct colors. But there is some variability in the need to choose a small area with no stars or nebulosity to find a neutral for the sky, and if that is off the effects can be magnified later. I also have a fair bit of light pollution which could be creeping in here.