M42 from an Urban Setting

Here is a bit of an experiment in urban imaging. This image was taken from light polluted third magnitude urban skies To negate the effects of light pollution, the ISO was reduced to allow for longer sub-exposures. The longer subs and aggressive noise reduction allowed a reasonable image to be captured

Object	Object RA 5:35:16 Dec -5:23:01
Exposure	66 minutes (33 X 2 minutes) for the faint areas and 8 minutes (16 X 30 seconds) for the core
ISO	400 to accomodate the bright sky
Camera	Canon 350D DSLR
Optics	8" f/4 Schmidt Newtonian Telescope
Location	Bedford Nova Scotia
Processing	Calibration, stacking, background noise reduction and initial star size reduction done with Images Plus . Both exposures were combined using a LMS technique. Background correction and further noise reduction applied in Paint Shop Pro . The star colour was enhanced the resulting image was then sharpened and resized for this web page.