Orion Nebula with the ASI 174MM

A month ago I’ve decided to recapture the Orion Nebula (M 42) with the 115mm APO Refractor. Last time I’ve used this refractor to image M 42, it was coupled with the ASI 120MM camera.

For this session I used the new ASI 174MM with a Baader RGB filter set. The result would have been far better if the location for the session would have been up in the mountains; but it wasn’t, and the light pollution kept blocking any faint light from the nebula to reach my camera…

Nevertheless, a nice view did emerge from the many thousands of frames acquired that night. The processing was done mostly to show the more intricate details inside the nebula, with no excessive color saturation or increased brightness.

Setup and method: Teleskop Service 115mm F/7 APO Refractor with ZWO ASI 174MM camera, on SkyWatcher EQ 6 mount with normal tracking (no guiding).

Exposures for Luminance (UV/IR-cut filter): 13x20sec, 100x8sec, 1000x2sec, 1000×0.5sec. Exposures for RGB: 100x1sec each channel.

So only short exposures for this image. Next time I have a chance I’ll try a different approach for the acquisition part (some long exposures perhaps).

The same night I got a fast glance at the Leo I galaxy near Regulus. Same equipment but no RGB sequence this time, only 20×20 seconds with no filter. Some stars from this faint galaxy are visible, as are some other small galaxies around the field of view:

The above result is a good reason for me to plan for a longer session with this object in the near future.