M42/43 with an LeNhance filter
An f/5.5, 80mm, ED refractor was mounted on a Celestron AVX GOTO mount. The mount was pulse auto-guided with PHD2 using an SV165 guide-scope and an SV305 as the guide camera.
An Atik 314E OSC camera was fited with an Optalong LeNhance dual-band narrowband filter and was placed at the focus of the refractor. This filter excludes all wavelengths but H-alpha, H-beta and Olll.
AstroDMx Capture for Windows, running on a Windows 11 laptop, was used to capture 15 x 5min FITS exposures of the Orion Nebula along with Bias frames and matching dark frames.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture capturing 5 minute exposures. The preview was set to 150% and the non-destructive16-bit brightness was set to x2 to facilitate viewing the data being captured.
This illusstrates another mechanism for brightening the preview of the object being imaged to make it more visible. Note that the Trapezium region of the nebula appears less burnt out because the extra brightness has not been imposed on the preview. It must always be remembered that the preview of the captured images is not intended to show how the final image will apear after post processing, it is intended simply to show that the object has been located and that data are being captured.
The images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and separately in Affinity Photo and post processed in the Gimp, FastStone and Topaz Sharpen AI.
Final image of M42/43
