Urban M42

While testing some fixes to my cold temperature pinched optics issues with my Esprit 120 I captured the image below. The fix for the pinched optics turned out to be relatively simple, wrapping a dew heater around the lens cell. The image was taken with a bright Moon less than 30 degrees away which resulted in a slightly washed out image.

Object M42  Object RA 5:35:16 Dec -5:23:01 Exposure 50 minutes (25 X 2 minutes)  for the outer areas and  160 seconds (16 X 10 seconds) for the core ISO 800 Camera Canon 60Da DSLR Optics Prime focus of a SkyWatcher Esprit 120 f/7 APO refractor Location Bedford, Nova Scotia Processing This image was processed entirely in Images Plus. Calibration, stacking, statistical filter applied to reduce noise before stretching. Masked stretching and split star processing used to enhance the image. Masked noise reduction using a frequency domain lowpass filter applied to the 50 minute exposure. Combined with the shorter exposure using a mask to restore the core detail. Image binned 2 by 2. Final sharpening applied. Since the 60Da has on sensor dark suppression no darks were used in the calibration.