M42 M43 NGC1977 20110109 mcrae tweakCanon 1000D; 150P; EQ3-2; remote timer; DSS; PSe7

Brilliant photo(s), what sort of exposure lengths and number of them I guess did you use to get this?

About 40 or 50x 90 sec @ ISO800 with 30 darks, 30 T-shirt flats, and 50 Bias frames. I made a duplicate image and did a less agressive histogram stretch for the core region and then layered it back into the second image which had the full stretch to bring out the fainter details.

I have almost the same setup as you have used here and my shots of M42 are nowhere near as good! I have the a 150p with a 550d dslr and eq3-2 mount with dual axis drives. Any advice you have would be great!

Good polar alignment is essential to get the best results. And take lots of sub so have enough data to work with in Photoshop. If you are short of data, when you try and stretch it, you just get noise. Keep at it and it will fall into place.