my first successful attempt at deep sky astrophotography. still light years to go. the Orion Nebula(M42) is the nearest star-forming region to the earth at a mere 1300 light years(approx.) located in the ‘sword’ of the Orion constellation(pic 2). astrophotographers are an obsessed lot spending nights of efforts for photographing something which eventually often looks like a hazy white patch in some noisy black photograph.
200mm f/5.6 lens, Nikon D90, Astrotrac, stack of 5 shots of various exposures, totalling around 7-8 minutes. Nuh, Haryana. Pic 2 - Crop from 18mm f/4.