The Orion Nebula in all its Glory!

• Target: M42 | Diffuse Nebula in Orion
• Apparent Magnitude: +4
• Light frames: 40 x 300” @ ISO1600 ( 200 Minutes)
• Light frames for Core Region: 11 x 15” @ ISO1600 | 9 x 45″ @ ISO 1600
• Dark frames: 16 x 300” @ ISO1600
• Flat frames: 20 x Av Mode @ ISO 1600
• Bias frames: 20 x 1/8000” @ ISO1600
• Guided with Orion SSAG using PHD2

Environmental:
• Date: 5,6,7 February 2016
• Location: Tilak’s Farm, Near Mandya , Karnataka
• Sky Conditions: Moderately dark but quite hazy across all three nights

Main Equipment:
• Telescope: Sky-Watcher 8″ f/5 Newtonian Reflector
• Mount: Sky-Watcher NEQ6
• Camera: Canon 5D Mark II [ Unmodified ] • Filter: IDAS LPS 2″ Filter for majority of the images

Accessories:
• Coma corrector: Sky-Watcher 0.9x Coma Corrector
• Power-Supply: 150AH Inverter Battery with Inverter

Integration and Processing:

• Processed in PixInsight 1.8
• Batch Preprocessing Script with Cosmetic Correction
• Dynamic Crop
• DBE
• Background Neutralisation
• Colour Calibration
• ATrousWaveletTransform for Linear Noise Reduction
• Histogram Transformation
• Exponential Transformation
• Saturation Curves
• ACDNR
• Final Crop and layering of Exposures in PS

Problems Faced:
1. While 15s and 45s exposures helped patch up the core, a better result could have been achieved if I included even 1 minutes or 1.5 minute exposures also
2. Framing could have been better. I placed the Nebula far too much on the left of the frame wasting some space which could have been used as a wider background