This composition of Orion’s Belt, that includes the Orion and Horsehead nebulae, has been on my “to-do” list ever since I got into astrophotography. I’ve shot them each individually, but I really wanted to get them in a single shot for ease of processing, printing, etc. For this, I used my 275mm Radian Raptor and full spectrum modified Nikon D800. I may have slightly overexposed the core of the Orion nebula by pushing 5 minute exposures at ISO 3200, but that was what was needed to bring out the faint detail everywhere else. With decent polar alignment (75th percentile in the world apparently according to my ASIAIR Plus) and guiding, the 5 minute exposures were tack sharp. Not very much of the process went according to plan, so this is the result of only 90 minutes of integration in my Bortle 8 skies (with help from an Optolong L-eNhance filter). I’m used to my astrophotography images being less than 10 megapixels after cropping to “zoom in”, so this makes me feel better with it being over 30 megapixels.
