M42 12-30-18

Progress is a Wonderful Thing.

A clear evening! finally allowed me to put to the test advice given out graciously here at SGL concerning my PHD2 guiding issues, and all seems now to be under control for the first time!

I collected 51x180s sub, 15dark, 15flat and 2bias images at 1600iso from M45 that I may share at a later date, but which more importantly was good data.

To finish off the night I gathered 7x180s subs of M42 at iso1600, which you see here composed with 5dark, 5flat and 2bias images. I'd heard that this nebula was a good starter target but I don't see much of it for long. The detail surprised me for the 21m ttl. I messed with it in DeepSkyStacker and a generic photo editor for contrast, as still I wait for PhotoshopCC.

This is my first crack at M42, only my fourth target overall (M31, M33, M45,) and the second to be guided efficiently following the M45 session. It was more of an afterthought to end the evening, which accounts for the framing, so I'm quite pleased with it. I'm looking forward to some serious time with M42, but it willl take a road trip to get the data.