The heart of M42

Image Title: The heart of M42

Copyright: Nicola Beltraminelli

Date image was taken: November 15, 2023

Location: Own remote observatory at E-Eye

Image Description and Details: 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, and is known as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with apparent magnitude 4.0. It is 1,344 light-years away 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 (Source: Wikipedia).
We all know the incredible contribution of the HST to this iconic nebula. We, non-professional astrophographers accessing the sky via our small sized telescopes from earth suffer from the limitations of the turbulence and limited diameter of our instruments. And yet, thanks to the unimaginable technological progress achieved over the past 30 years, obtaining images with reasonable resolution and quality is not mission impossible anymore. M42 is such an example, where for a long time it was almost impossible to show the brightest and the dimmest regions of the nebula on a single frame. Furthermore, it was very challenging to achieve 1 arc-second or better details on the entire nebula. Thanks to excellent optics, high quality mounts, very high-quality cameras and a large panel of softer and AI driven processes accessible to the public, achieving these results is now a reality.
The objective of this work was to generate an image including both, the extremely bright region of the trapezium, as well as the very dim nebulas surrounding M42 and M43. I thus took 1 second, 5 seconds, 60 seconds and 300 seconds subs in LRGB and then generated a separate layer for each one of them.
I then used SPCC to match the color of the stars and of the nebula. At that point I generated as many as 7 RGB and 7 L layer masks in PS, so to avoid burning the core while highlighting the very dim regions. Achieving the right contrast/brightness balance for each layer to avoid brutal light transitions was definitely very challenging.

Images:
Chroma Blue 50 mm: 14×300″(1h 10′)
Chroma Blue 50 mm: 20×5″(1′ 40″)
Chroma Blue 50 mm: 20×60″(20′)
Chroma Clear 50 mm: 30×1″(30″)
Chroma Clear 50 mm: 56×300″(4h 40′)
Chroma Clear 50 mm: 33×5″(2′ 45″)
Chroma Clear 50 mm: 60×60″(1h)
Chroma Green 50 mm: 14×300″(1h 10′)
Chroma Green 50 mm: 20×5″(1′ 40″)
Chroma Green 50 mm: 20×60″(20′)
Chroma Red 50 mm: 14×300″(1h 10′)
Chroma Red 50 mm: 20×5″(1′ 40″)
Chroma Red 50 mm: 20×60″(20′)
Total integration: 10h 18′ 15″

Equipment Details: Scope: Stellarvue SVX180T
Mount: 10 Micron GM2000 HPS II
Camera: ASI 6200MM cooled at -15°C
Filters: Clear, R, G, B from Chroma
Softwares: Adobe Lightroom Classic · Adobe Photoshop · Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight · Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA)

Website or Facebook Profile: http://www.facebook.com/nicola.beltraminelli/