Messier Objects
I highly recommend a book on Charles Messier and the creation of this catalogue - Atlas of Messier Objects, 2008 by Ronald Stoyan.
Note: This gallery should be automatically sorted by Messier #.
Messier M42 NGC1976 Orion Nebula and NGC1977 Running Man Nebula - 14/04/2012 (Processed stack)
Prime focus of a borrowed 8" f/4 Newtonian. You can see the beginings of coma distortion on stars half way from the centre increasing toward the corners and shows why short focal ratio Newtonians need these to flatten the field. This was late in the year for M42 so it was low in my western skyglow and lacks detail and definition and the running man nebula in the star group to the ight is barely visible. Also see cropped version.
DeepSkyStacker 3.3.2 Stacked 85% of 6 Images ISO 800 120 Sec, 32 DARK, 0 BIAS, 0 FLATS, Post-processed by Photoshop CS5
Telescope - Bintel BT200 f/4.0 Newtonian with no Coma corrector (borrowed from Stephen Boyd), Hutech IDAS LPS-P2 filter, Canon 400D DSLR, Ambient 15C. Mount - Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro. Guidescope - Orion ShortTube 80 with Star Shoot Auto Guider.
MessierM42 Orion NebulaNGCNGC1976 M42 Orion NebulaNGC1977 Running Man NebulaGalactic Nebula
