Orion Nebula and Eskimo Nebula - February 24, 2017

I was experimenting to see how bad the light pollution where I live would affect photographing some astronomical objects. I photographed a large bright emission nebula (Orion Nebula, M42) and a small planetary nebula (Eskimo Nebula, NGC 2392) and was surprised how well they turned out. These photographs are combinations of multiple images of the same scene that are averaged together to reduce camera noise. They were taken through my home-made telescope on a tracking mount.

Orion Nebula
Exposure: 2 x 5 seconds

Eskimo Nebula
Exposure: 3 x 10 seconds

Photographer: Rick Scott
Date: February 24, 2017
Camera: Canon EOS 40D digital camera
Camera Mode: ISO 800 RAW
Lens: Home-made 10 inch f/4.63 Lurie Houghton Telescope
Mount: Losmandy G-11 equatorial with Gemini 2
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS6 for RAW conversion and image processing

Updated: February 25, 2017