I did this with the K-01, 180x 30 seconds, ISO 1600, Optolong CLS filter, Williams Optics Flat 2 0.8 flattener & reducer, TPO 8RC, and on an iOptron zeq25 last night, unguided, out in the state park near my house, and with the moon blasting down on everything. It was the first clear night in a while.

Holy Moly!

That was about 5 minutes of editing, but I think it may be my best one yet.

Wow, Scotty, this is a nice one! Superb!

Outstanding! Wow!

Wow! Unguided! Very nice

EDIT: This kind of makes me wonder why we use guiding. I used to think it was the easiest way to track but at the time I didn't realize you still need good polar alignment for good guiding. So really, guiding is just compensating for PEC, which most mounts can do now. So why use the extra camera, scope, cables and laptop?

EDIT EDIT: Thinking again, I guess its a real pain to train for PEC. I think I'd rather guide every session than sit though one manual guide for PEC.

And at 30 seconds per exposure, I wonder what guiding would really buy us. (Says the guy with the brand-new, so-far-unused-successfully guidescope and camera.) That is really, really something, Scotty. Ka wow, as they say in the Mars books.

Thanks everyone! M42 is a really bright object, so longer subs will blow the core stars out. I really went too aggressive on the core. Many do short core exposures, then longer to pull out the faint details. I do think after I flock my Meade SN10 I may go back after this and try to get all of it and M43 in the frame too, I want to try that under a moonless night or at least with no moon there.

As far as guiding I do want to attempt it when I but a pair of MGEN II autoguiders when I get the yearly bonus on March 15th. It will come in handy during peak galaxy season and on faint stuff.