It's difficult to describe how glad I feel, after nearly 7 hours of processing for this image. It is the "complete" image without the restriction of using only 10 exposures, in my submission to the Free Study 2011-12.
The faint red nebulosity of hydrogen between IC434 and M42 (at the center of the frame) is obtained usually with a dedicated astronomical CCD. So I am very happy that I managed to reveal a portion of it with my "poor" DSLR.
Info:
Camera: Canon 1000Da (moified for astrophotography)
Mount: Astrotrac TT320X
Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 USM IS II
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure: 7x10sec (to maintain the detailed core of M42's center) at ISO400, + 15x90sec at ISO800, + 18x90s at ISO1600 (total = 50.67min)
Focal Length: 200mm
Field of View: 91.36% of the origianl frame
Alignment, calibration, stacking with DeepSkyStacker , further processing with PixInsight and PS CS3
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