M42 Orion Nebula image taken on 12-21-1998 at 01:03:20. One 15 seconds image and one 15 seconds dark frame. A longer than 15 second image results in star blooming in the Orion Nebula.

A general CCD imaging rule is to take the longest exposure before star blooming and telescope mount traking cause problems in the image. To image fainter objects you stack multiple images.

The imaging processing process is started with Richard Berry's CB245 version 60a used for calibrating the image with a 15 second dark frame to remove CCD thermal noise.

The calibrated image was image processed with CB245 functions called Kunihiko Okano's Digital Development. Next Software Bisque CCDSoft CCD Astronomy Software version 4.00.018 was used for brightness adjustment, contrast adjustment, rotating image, resampling to correct aspect ratio, and saving the image as a JPEG file for Web pages.

M42 Orion Nebula image from 31 images taken on 12-21-1998 at 01:07:57 to 01:20:06. 32 images were taken but one image was not used because it was blurred. 31-15 seconds images were stacked and calbrated with the averge of 16-15 seconds dark frames.

The imaging processing process is started with Richard Berry's Multi245 version 40d for averaging 16 dark frames to create a master dark frame to be subtracted from each of the 31 raw images to produce 31 calibrated images. Next the 31 calibrated images are register and stacked into one single calibrated image to be used for image processing. This process is very simple and easy using Multi245. About five Multi245 commands are runned to complete this task of creating a single calibrate image. Multi245 ML & AL commands for creating a master dark frame and ML, TS & SA commands for creating the single calibrated image.

The calibrated image was image processed with CB245 functions called Kunihiko Okano's Digital Development. Next Software Bisque CCDSoft CCD Astronomy Software version 4.00.018 was used for brightness adjustment, contrast adjustment, rotating image, resampling to correct aspect ratio, and saving the image as a JPEG file for Web pages. JASC Inc. Paint Shop Pro version 4.12 was used for croping the image to 187 pixels wide by 214 pixels high.