December 8, 2007, 11:05pm PST
Victoria, BC, Canada

I have photographed the Orion Nebula several times in the past, but this is my first attempt using my modified Canon XTi dSLR. The difference is astounding, which I suppose should be expected, given the Orion Nebula is the brightest emission nebula in the northern sky.

There is still some noise in this resultant image, mainly caused by my imaging session being cut short by cloud cover. In particular, the Trapezium in M42 is blown out, since I didn't have time to take images properly exposed for this bright part of the object. This is my best image of the Orion Nebula region to date.

Details:
Optics: Hutech modified Canon XTi and Canon 400mm L series telephoto operating at f/5.6 mounted on an Astrotrac equatorial mount.
Exposures: 41 images at 30 sec
ISO 1600,
Custom white balance to compensate for IDAS LPS filter
Processing:
ImagesPlus 2.8: digital development of Canon Raw to FITS, dark & flat frames applied. Average used for stacking the images, then modest Digital Development applied to the resultant image, star size reduction, background compensation.
ACDSee Pro 2: cropping and conversion of this image to 24 bit RGB for further processing.
Corel PhotoPaint X3: complex contrast stretch, saturation increase, converion to jpg final format.