The Great Orion Nebula

M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

Click the link to see in higher resolution on my flickr page.

I finally got a clear night with the telescope and got some shots of the Orion Nebula. It was my first try at stacking photos in order to really filter out the noise inherent in long exposures. This photo was created with ten two minute exposures of the nebula. The software is amazingly confusing the first time through. A lot like your first crack at doing just about anything in Photoshop. I think I'll get better at it after a little trial, error, and googling...

Taking a Closer Look

I've been looking back through a lot of the less-amazing pictures I took while living at the South Pole. With some of the new stargazing tools I have come across since buying my telescope, I have been able to better identify many of the objects hiding in plain sight. I always knew where Jupiter was during my winter, since it was the brightest object in the sky the whole time, but I was happy and shocked to learn that Neptune was also captured in this shot not too far from Jupiter.