Urban M42, 2021

Here is yet another urban image taken from my driveway. This shot is a relatively short exposure at 2 hours and forty minutes and was taken with a waxing gibbous Moon in the sky about 30 degrees away from where the telescope was pointing. I reasonably sure that the only reason I was able to capture the detail visible in the image is because I was using an Optolong L-eNhance light pollution filter. I'm not normally a fan of light pollution filters for one shot colour imaging as they tend to really screw up the colour balance, but the latest generation of dual and tri-band filters available from several manufacturers do a much better job at preserving proper colour in our images. According to Wikipedia "The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

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Object The Orion Nebula Object RA 5:35:16 Dec -5:23:01
Date 23 & 10 February, 2021
Exposure 160 minutes (16 X 10 minutes), five minute subs used for the core 15 minutes (3 X 5 minutes)
Conditions Very bright sky due to high light pollution and a gibbous Moon nearby. The sky was easily  Bortle 8 withe the combined light from the light pollution and the bright Moon.
Gain 100
Camera Zwo ASI2600MC-Pro
Optics Prime focus of a  SkyWatcher Esprit 120 f/7 APO refractor with a focal length of 840 mm
Filter Optolong L-eNhance
Location Bedford, Nova Scotia
Processing This image was captured using Sequence Generator Pro. Split star processed similar to this.