The plan was to capture the flaming star nebula in Auriga last night, with it being overhead. I set the tracker up, took a few shots and immediately realised just how faint it was!.. As an antidote to this disappointment, I aimed the camera at the brightest nebula in the sky, the Great Orion Nebula.

I was able to add another 60 shots to the 112 I already had from last years efforts. I had reworked the 56 minute image several times, improving the results each time as my post processing techniques have developed.

The sequence below shows a progression from single 30 second photo, up to the latest image of 1 hour 26 minutes. There’s a big jump in image quality at each stage, with the latest image being much sharper due to the improved barn door tracker design. I also managed to find a more pleasing colour balance compared to the slightly muddied earlier versions.

Image details: Nikon D7000, Nikkor 180mm f2.8 at f2.8. 1 hour 26 minutes (172 x 30 seconds) at iso 800. Using didymium filter. Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker and tracked with barn door tracker.

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