A widefield capture of the Ha nebulosity in Orion surrounding the well known M42 (the Great Orion Nebula) and the Horsehead/Flame Nebulae. Camera is the ZWO ASI6200 full frame CMOS coupled with a Canon 200mm f2.8 lens. The Ha image was produced using the continuum subtraction technique to extract the Red filter data from the Ha data. This removes the data coming from continuous spectrum sources such as stars resulting in a clearer representation of the Ha data. The StarXtermintor process in Pixinsight was used to remove the stars from the final Ha image for this presentation.
I wasn't intending to produce a Ha only image of this region and have been capturing data for a HaRGB image. However, when I saw how the Ha image was developing I was entranced by the amount detail that is present. This is particularly so with the swirling clouds of gas and the myriad of different shapes that can be seen across the field of view. Looking at the area below M42 it seems that there is a long bodied bearded dragon emerging in search of prey.
Vicent Peris (Pixinsight Team/OAUV) and Alicia Lozano recently applied this technique to their
M31 project and captured their
processing notes on the Pixinsight resources site. The notes include a good description of the continuum subtraction technique.
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