M42, by Mearl Balmer

Took this from home last night. First time I could actually capture both the subtle nebulosity colors as well as the important Trapezium stars, a region where new young stars like our sun are developing (you can see the grouping of the four Trapezium stars if you zoom in to the bright white center of the image). This was a live stack of 80 each 30 second images in SharpCap Pro using my Vixen R200SS 8 inch Astrograph, ZWO ASI071MC Pro camera, unguided, no filters.

Further processed in PixInsight. This was only 40 minutes of images; I don’t get many nights with Orion not hidden in my southern trees. I got too tired to take any darks, so a little noisy, but it was cooled to -20C below ambient which gave me some of the cleanest subs I ever had. Mearl Balmer.