Sunday 20 March 2022

M78

M78 . In Orion . This image of M78 was taken under clear moonless sky conditions with stars visible down to magnitude 4.7. I was using my f/4.8 reflector, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I captured five-minute sub-frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The total exposure times was 60 minutes using a blue filter , 40 minutes using an O111 filter and 30 minutes using a H-alpha filter.

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