M42 · ORION & RUNNING MAN DEC 2025
§ DEEP-SKY · TARGET
M42
Orion & Running Man
- TYPE
- Emission nebula + reflection
- CONSTELLATION
- Orion
- DISTANCE
- 1,344 ly
- MAGNITUDE
- +4.0
- APPARENT SIZE
- 85' × 60'
ACQUISITION
DATE
Dec 2025
LOCATION
Anza-Borrego, CA · Bortle 2
INTEGRATION
12h 00m
PALETTE
LRGB
SUBS
720 × 60s + HDR 30s/6s
SEEING
2.6"
FILTERS
L · R · G · B
First light on the printed OTA. Everything about this image is the story of a scope I didn't fully trust yet, taking a picture of a target that punishes any instrument that doesn't know what it's doing.
§ 01 · THE NIGHT
How this one came together
I shot this on the first clear night after the scope was ready. The core of Orion is a brutal HDR test -- the trapezium is four orders of magnitude brighter than the outer wisps. I blew the core on every sub that was longer than six seconds, so the final image is a stack at 60s for the faint stuff plus shorter 30s and 6s exposures for the core.
§ 02 · PROCESSING
Workflow
- HDR composite from three exposure tiers
- Star reduction for the dense field
- Dust lane preservation -- no sharpening no AI
- Running Man in reflection added as a mild RGB layer
§ 03 · GEAR
Equipment
- SCOPE
- Printed 200/800 Newt · OTA v1.0
- CAMERA
- ASI2600MM Pro
- MOUNT
- EQ6-R Pro
- FILTERS
- Antlia LRGB
- GUIDING
- OAG