View allAll Photos Tagged messier42
Managed to get something out of the data. Star trails are apparent due to it being cropped in. Also the bottom star (Saiph) is not in the image due to it being below the houses.
The Orion Nebula (Messier 42) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. It is around 1,300 light-years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
ZWO ASIAIR Pro
ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C
ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam on ZWO OAG
Celestron C5 Spotter scope
SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro
No filters.
Captured in Live View, saving every frame:
10 Lights at 180 seconds, gain 100, temp -10C
60 Flats, at 20ms gain 100, temp -10C
60 Dark Flats, at 20ms gain 100, temp -10C
100 Bias at 1ms, gain 100, temp -10C
Bortle 4 sky.
Integrated in Astro Pixel Processor and adjusted in Photoshop CS4.
Taken on December 24, 2011 at Montebello OSP. This is the Orion Nebula as seen through the Stellarvue SV4 telescope. Taken with my full-spectrum modified Pentax K10D camera at prime focus.
This is a stack of several images at different time settings: 3 at 1 minute, 6 at 2 minutes, 3 at 5 minutes, and 1 at 10 minutes. All at ISO 100 to give the maximum data headroom possible. No darks used in this stack, thus there's a lot of noise. Stacked using DSS. PP with PixInsight to apply histogram and curve modifications. I did make a bunch of flats, so at least the dust motes are reduced.
First attempt at capturing the Orion Constellation with multiple exposure stacking. Shot taken from 40N, North Greece during late evening just as it was rising from the horizon over the buildings .
I could let the cam capture a couple hundred frames before it was blocked by clouds and houses..but most were out of focus due to extreme wind, so chose and manually aligned and stacked the best 11, in Photoshop.
Pentax K-r - 12Mpx APS-C sized CMOS sensor
SMC D FA 50mm 1:1 macro lens
Shot at 50mm - wide open @ f2.8
11 x 6 second exposure 'light' frames
ISO 1600
Waxing moon 23.6%
Since it was shot from the center of the city there was loads of light pollution and smoke from nearby fireplace chimneys that was in-frame all of the time.Tried to remove it in post but lost lot of detail..anyway here are the results...The noise was reduced a lot by stacking but I see I need many more 'light' frames, much longer exposure time..and stop being lazy and start shooting 'dark', 'bias' and 'flat' frames to increase the quality of the fainter objects (ie the small Flame Nebula NGC 2024, located right under the lowest of the 3 Orion Belt's stars, is just baaarely visible here/while in a single frame exposure it was lost under the noise). Still..I 'm satisfied with the stacking results considering the result is just about 1 min total combined exposure.Histogram peak intentionally kept @ 1/4 on the left (bit underexposed) to avoid overblown stars.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a small region of the Great Nebula in Orion.
The Orion Nebula is one of the nearest regions of very recent star formation. The nebula is a giant gas cloud illuminated by the brightest of the young hot stars on the right side of the picture. Many of the fainter young stars are surrounded by disks of dust and gas that are slightly more than twice the diameter of the solar system. The great plume of gas in the upper left in this picture is the result of the ejection of material from a recently formed star.
The brightest portions are "hills" on the surface of the nebula, and the long bright bar is where Earth observers look along a long "wall" on a gaseous surface.
The diagonal length of the image is 1.6 light-years. Red light depicts emission in nitrogen, green is hydrogen, and blue is oxygen.
The Orion Nebula star-birth region is 1,500 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Orion the Hunter. The image was taken on December 29, 1993, with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/163/news_release/1994-24
Credit: NASA and C.R. O'Dell (Rice University)
2010-02-07 Orion Nebula - Third Attempt
12 x 45 second exposures and 3 x 30 second exposures stacked into one image using Deep Sky Stacker
One of my first attempts at stacking expsoures. They aren't very long exposures and not a big total exposure time but I'm happy with the detail captured around the core of the nebula.
Shot with a Canon T1i at prime focus, ISO 200 with automatic dark frame subtraction on a 10" Meade SN-10-AT telescope. 1016mm F4.
Day 37 of my UKMON Fireball Challenge where I'm creating an astronomy sketch or piece of art every day for 2 months. Today's sketch is the core of M42 the Orion Nebula with "The Trapezium" at the centre. It was sketched on black paper with coloured pastels + a white acrylic paint pen for the stars, using a photo that I took back in February 2017. The photo exposure time was kept really short so that the area around The Trapezium wasn't over-exposed - you can view the photo here: flic.kr/p/S9Q2zz
The Orion Nebula, also known as M42, or Messier 42. It is found in the lower part of the constellation Orion as part of the sword hanging from his belt. Even in a small pair of binoculars it is a beautiful sight, though the colors are too faint to be seen by human eyes.
M42 itself is the largest part at center stage, and the smaller pink bubble on its back is known as M43. At the top of the image is NGC 1977 nicknamed Running Man (see if you can spot him). The red light is emitted by atomic hydrogen, and the bluish and grey areas are mostly dusty regions scattering and reflecting the light from young hot blue stars. This region of space is a mix of newly formed stars and dark, dense clouds where star formation is an ongoing process. In a couple of hundred million years the remaining gas and dust will have been blown away into interstellar space, and a cluster of thousands of stars will be sparkling in the sky.
It's wintertime! And finally a starry night. I tried to get better in Astrophotography....
Orion (3 belt stars in the top), Orion nebula M42 (lower right), Horsehead nebula B33 (left),
Canon 60Da + Canon EF 70-200 f/2,8 IS II at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 400
5x 60sek, Tracking with AstroTrac, Stacked with Fitswork
My first attempt at shooting deep sky object (DSO) in Singapore light polluted night sky. Some blown parts in the photo. I guess it is part of learning and improvement. Hope the next one will be better than this :)
Simple setup with a Pentax K-30 and 55-300mm. Light subs were tracked at 10 seconds each by O-GPS1
Details:
40x10s light frames and 8 dark frames, stacked in DSS
f/8.0, iso1250, 300mm, 10s each
4.5 minute composite
9x30 seconds- calibrated in deep sky stacker with dark/bias/flat frames and 10 light frames( one light frame was subtracted during the stacking process)
camera data_
aperture F4.5
spot metering
135mm focal length
daylight WB
ISO 1600
-Orion EQ-1 mount -motor driven unguided polar alignment
This Image was processed with adobe creative suite and Please comment and critique- your feedback is always welcome:-) Jason Jenkins
Picture saved with settings applied.
The Messier Catalog, sometimes known as the Messier Album or list of Messier objects, is one of the most useful tools in the astronomy hobby. In the middle of the 18th century, the return of Halley's comet helped to prove the Newtonian theory, and helped to spark a new interest in astronomy. During this time, a French astronomer named Charles Messier began a life-long search for comets. He would eventually discover 15 of them. On August 28, 1758, while searching for comets, Messier found a small cloudy object in the constellation Taurus. He began keeping a journal of these nebulous (cloudy) objects so that they would not be confused with comets. This journal is known today as the Messier Catalog, or Messier Album. The deep sky objects in this catalog are commonly referred to as Messier objects.
The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated as NGC) is a catalogue of deep-sky objects compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888 as a new version of John Herschel's General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. The NGC contains 7,840 objects, known as the NGC objects. It is one of the largest comprehensive catalogues, as it includes all types of deep space objects and is not confined to, for example, galaxies. Dreyer also published two supplements to the NGC in 1895 and 1908, known as the Index Catalogues, describing a further 5,386 astronomical objects.
NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have teamed up to expose the chaos that baby stars are creating 1,500 light-years away in a cosmic cloud called the Orion Nebula.
This striking infrared and visible-light composite indicates that four monstrously massive stars at the center of the cloud may be the main culprits in the familiar Orion constellation. The stars are collectively called the "Trapezium." Their community can be identified as the yellow smudge near the center of the image.
Swirls of green in Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light view reveal hydrogen and sulfur gas that have been heated and ionized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the Trapezium's stars. Meanwhile, Spitzer's infrared view exposes carbon-rich molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the cloud. These organic molecules have been illuminated by the Trapezium's stars, and are shown in the composite as wisps of red and orange. On Earth, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are found on burnt toast and in automobile exhaust.
Together, the telescopes expose the stars in Orion as a rainbow of dots sprinkled throughout the image. Orange-yellow dots revealed by Spitzer are actually infant stars deeply embedded in a cocoon of dust and gas. Hubble showed less embedded stars as specks of green, and foreground stars as blue spots.
Stellar winds from clusters of newborn stars scattered throughout the cloud etched all of the well-defined ridges and cavities in Orion. The large cavity near the right of the image was most likely carved by winds from the Trapezium's stars.
Located 1,500 light-years away from Earth, the Orion Nebula is the brightest spot in the sword of the Orion, or the "Hunter" constellation. The cosmic cloud is also our closest massive star-formation factory, and astronomers believe it contains more than 1,000 young stars.
The Orion constellation is a familiar sight in the fall and winter night sky in the northern hemisphere. The nebula is invisible to the unaided eye, but can be resolved with binoculars or small telescopes.
This composite image displays light detected at wavelengths of 0.43, 0.50, and 0.53 microns in blue. Light at wavelengths of 0.6, 0.65, and 0.91 microns is green. Light at 3.6 microns is orange, and 8.0 microns is red.
After a long, very wet, and very cloudy spell here in the Pacific Northwest, last night I was afforded crisp, clear skies in which I took no time wasting setting up my telescope and imaging gear again. This is a combination of three sets of data. Two sets of data were shot last fall and this set, shot overnight on January 14, 2013. I combined them in Deep Sky Stacker, then combined those with a few sets of pre-made flat and dark frames to make this beauty. Over the next couple nights (weather permitting) I am going to add more data to this.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image by way of the European Southern Observatory of the Orion Nebula.
Original caption: The Great Nebula in Orion is featured in this sweeping image from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The Orion Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion Nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.
The metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full Moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion Nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.
Astronomers now realize that the Orion Nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame Nebula. This complex in our Milky Way Galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light.
Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light.
In HST palette. About 30 minutes per channel with various exposure lengths
This is a freakishly difficult target to image well, the center burns thru with under one minute exposures and the faint outer wisps don't even show up with 10 minute shots. The temperature started playing tricks on the equipment, neither EQ6 nor my camera really like it this cold. The lubricants become glue at -25 or so, so I had to build a heater for the camera to heat the front of the barrel (and shutter mechanism by proxy) without adversely affecting the CCD cooling system. The gamble payed off, the camera body stayed around -5, CCD at -30 and ambient temperature plummeted to -31 deg C.
WO-110 FLT with 0.8x recucer, EQ6, SXVR-H18, Atik EFW2, Baader filters
If there isn't a deep sky object out there to be more frustrating than this...
Total data accumulation: 1 hour 45 minutes over two nights. The amount of data heavily bogged down Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop.
Messier 42 y alrededores. Apilado de 100x30 + 75x15 segs (1h 8'). f:200mm @ F/5.6, ISO 800. Canon 1000D +SMC Takumar 200mm, montura CG4. 25-11-2014
The Messier Catalog, sometimes known as the Messier Album or list of Messier objects, is one of the most useful tools in the astronomy hobby. In the middle of the 18th century, the return of Halley's comet helped to prove the Newtonian theory, and helped to spark a new interest in astronomy. During this time, a French astronomer named Charles Messier began a life-long search for comets. He would eventually discover 15 of them. On August 28, 1758, while searching for comets, Messier found a small cloudy object in the constellation Taurus. He began keeping a journal of these nebulous (cloudy) objects so that they would not be confused with comets. This journal is known today as the Messier Catalog, or Messier Album. The deep sky objects in this catalog are commonly referred to as Messier objects.
The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated as NGC) is a catalogue of deep-sky objects compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888 as a new version of John Herschel's General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. The NGC contains 7,840 objects, known as the NGC objects. It is one of the largest comprehensive catalogues, as it includes all types of deep space objects and is not confined to, for example, galaxies. Dreyer also published two supplements to the NGC in 1895 and 1908, known as the Index Catalogues, describing a further 5,386 astronomical objects.
A colony of hot, young stars is stirring up the cosmic scene in this new picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The image shows the Orion nebula, a happening place where stars are born. The young stars dip and peak in brightness due to a variety of reasons. Shifting cold and hot spots on the stars' surfaces cause brightness levels to change, in addition to surrounding disks of lumpy planet-forming material, which can obstruct starlight. Spitzer is keeping tabs on the young stars, providing data on their changing ways.
The hottest stars in the region, called the Trapezium cluster, are bright spots at center right. Radiation and winds from those stars has sculpted and blown away surrounding dust. The densest parts of the cloud appear dark at center left.
This image was taken after Spitzer's liquid coolant ran dry in May 2009, marking the beginning of its "warm" mission. Light from the telescope's remaining infrared channels has been color-coded: 3.6-micron light is blue and 4.5-micron light is orange.
Apilado de 215x15s +55x30 s +60x8s (1.5h), f:400mm @ F/5.7, ISO 1600. Canon 1000D +Celestron 70/400, montura CG4. 27/08 y 09/11/2012
15 exposures @ 60 sec, 15 exposures @ 120 sec, 15 exposures @ 240 sec, ISO 800 Camera: Canon EOS 1000D Instrument: Meade 102/700mm APO Refractor
The Orion Nebula and the 'Running Man nebula' are situated in the constellation of Orion, just below its 'belt'. The Orion nebula forms the tip of Orion's sword. Viewed through binoculars or a telescope it does not reveal color, but when photographed, its true beuaty comes out. The very bright part in the centre is a birthplace of stars.
Still a view through a telescope to see a nebula like this one live is an amazing experience, I can recommend it to everyone that has the chance to do so.
Another shot of Orion, one of my favorite deep sky objects. Shot with Canon T3i with 300mm F4L (Non-IS) lens wide open at f/4. 14X 30 second exposures at ISO 1250 stacked in DSS. (+9 dark frames) Satellite streaks removed and color adjusted in Lightroom 5. ioptron smarteq mount.
My first try in deep sky astrophotography... Orion Nebula.
There was too much stray light, and the mount has been configured slightly incorrectly...
But next time will be better, I hope :)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
28.01.2012, 18h UT
Meade SN-8 LXD-75, Zenit-ET, Fujicolor Pro 400H, 15 min, FOV 18x 3,1°
Orion is the sky's brightest emission nebula at magnitude 3.8, and it is our galaxy's closest star forming region at 1,600 light years away. You can even see it from most cities - it is the middle "star" in the sword. This is probably the most rewarding object to photograph up there - so large, bright and colorful.
I took about a dozen shots at ISO 200 and ISO 800 at prime focus on a Celestron 9.25" tube with a focal reducer, varying the exposure lengths between about 10-360 seconds, and using manual guiding. No dark frames were used. Stacking the varied exposures helps reduce the wide dynamic range.
Nebulosa de Orión. Apilado de 156x16segs (42min), f:400mm @ F/5.7, ISO 1600. Canon 1000D +Celestron 70/400. 27-08-2012
Blurry Composite of The constellation Orion
This photo is a composite of jpegs(YES JPEGS) that i had on my memory card as practice shots while testing the alignment of my mount. I forgot to switch back to raw until about 15 shots in. Anyway, i wanted to see what it would look like with stacked with kappa sigma clipping and no dark frames
approx 7 mins total
14x 30 seconds shutter speed
stacked, calibrated with kappa sigma clipping(no dark/bias/flat frames) in Deep Sky stacker
processed in Adobe Creative Suite
Shot with a Sony a390 DSLR
EQ-! mount single axis motor driven
Un-guided
daylight White balance
ISO 1600
aperture F4.0
focal length 55mm
My first shot at Deep Sky Photography. 100 Exposures of 1.3 sec at f/2.8 using a Nikon D300 with a 70-200 mm f/2.8 were stacked using Nebulosity on a Mac (20 Darks were substracted).
Thanks to Gunther Wegner for the incentive (gwegner.de/tipps/deep-sky-aufnahmen-stacken-und-bearbeiten/).
Somma di pose Jpg 21 x 300 1x 30 sec, 1x 60 sec, con Dss, e Ps, Canon 350D modificata, telescopio 80ED Skywatcher F6.7, ISO 800, focale 600mm, inseguitore Astrotrac.
Località: La Salute di livenza
Temperatura: 13°
Dark:21
Bias: 21
Note: Cielo fosco, in questa immagine sono state aggiunte altre due immagini, una di 30 sec di esposizione e un'altra di 60 sec di esposizione per far risaltare meglio il trapezio della zona centrale sempre sovraesposto, i colori sono stati fatti virare un pelo verso il viola
Edited Vista image from the European Southern Observatory of the Orion Nebula. Color/processing variant.
The Great Nebula in Orion is featured in this sweeping image from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The Orion Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion Nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.
The metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full Moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion Nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.
Astronomers now realize that the Orion Nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame Nebula. This complex in our Milky Way Galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light.
Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light.
Edited WISE image of the Orion Nebula, in infrared. While the generalities are the same, details look very different from the optical version. (NASA title.)
Original caption: The Great Nebula in Orion is featured in this sweeping image from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The Orion Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion Nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.
The metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full Moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion Nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.
Astronomers now realize that the Orion Nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame Nebula. This complex in our Milky Way Galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light.
Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image by way of the European Southern Observatory of the Orion Nebula. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The Great Nebula in Orion is featured in this sweeping image from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The Orion Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion Nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.
The metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full Moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion Nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.
Astronomers now realize that the Orion Nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame Nebula. This complex in our Milky Way Galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light.
Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light.
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
The famous and hard to properly shoot Messier 42 nebula complex. The mount failed in the cold and tracking was abysmal resulting in 5 pixel FWHM from a 2.1 pixel focus.
This winter I took 80 minutes of total LRGB exposure with 2 minute subs trying not to over expose the trapezium area.
Second, and likely final, edit via PixInsight of a closer view of M42 - The Great Orion Nebula.
90 min (30x 180s sub-exposures) integration with full calibration using 24x darks, 43x flats, and 40x bias frames. All stacking and processing was done in PixInsight, with the exception of final noise reduction using the Nik Collection's Dfine2 plug-in through Affinity Photo.
Quick practise at processing with some new work-flows. This is a small amount of data I managed to capture in a gap in the clouds. It does need more and needs to be deeper too. This is also a crop of the full version.
Kit:
William Optics GT81 Reduced with Atik460EXM
Skywatcher 80 ED DS Pro reduced with QHY8L.
Guided on an EQ8.
Ian Aiken, Sunderland, UK
The Messier Catalog, sometimes known as the Messier Album or list of Messier objects, is one of the most useful tools in the astronomy hobby. In the middle of the 18th century, the return of Halley's comet helped to prove the Newtonian theory, and helped to spark a new interest in astronomy. During this time, a French astronomer named Charles Messier began a life-long search for comets. He would eventually discover 15 of them. On August 28, 1758, while searching for comets, Messier found a small cloudy object in the constellation Taurus. He began keeping a journal of these nebulous (cloudy) objects so that they would not be confused with comets. This journal is known today as the Messier Catalog, or Messier Album. The deep sky objects in this catalog are commonly referred to as Messier objects.
This new view of the Orion nebula highlights fledging stars hidden in the gas and clouds. It shows infrared observations taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel mission, in which NASA plays an important role.
A star forms as a clump of this gas and dust collapses, creating a warm glob of material fed by an encircling disk. These dusty envelopes glow brightest at longer wavelengths, appearing as red dots in this image. In several hundred thousand years, some of the forming stars will accrete enough material to trigger nuclear fusion at their cores and then blaze into stardom.
The nebula is found below the three belt stars in the famous constellation of Orion the Hunter, which appears at night in northern latitudes during fall and then throughout winter. At a distance of around 1,500 light-years away from Earth, the nebula cannot quite be seen with the naked eye. Binoculars or a small telescope, however, are all it takes to get a good look in visible light at this stellar factory.
Spitzer is designed to see shorter infrared wavelengths than Herschel. By combining their observations, astronomers get a more complete picture of star formation. The colors in this image relate to the different wavelengths of light, and to the temperature of material, mostly dust, in this region of Orion. Data from Spitzer show warmer objects in blue, with progressively cooler dust appearing green and red in the Herschel datasets. The more evolved, hotter embryonic stars thus appear in blue.
The combined data traces the interplay of the bright, young stars with the cold and dusty surrounding clouds. A red garland of cool gas also notably runs through the Trapezium, the intensely bright region that is home to four humungous blue-white stars, and up into the rich star field.
Infrared data at wavelengths of 8.0 and 24 microns from Spitzer are rendered in blue. Herschel data with wavelengths of 70 and 160 microns are represented in green and red, respectively.
LRGB composite, multiple exposure durations, total approx. 4 hrs over two nights. From left The Running Man nebula (NGC1977) and the Great Orion Nebula (M42/M43).
The stars are significantly saturated in color channels leading colored bands around them (could try star reduction to eliminate the problem). I'm not completely satisfied with the quality of the TSQuad65 used to take this. I can't get it to focus into pinpoint stars.
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion.
La nebulosa de Orión, también conocida como Messier 42, M42, o NGC 1976, es una nebulosa difusa situada al sur del Cinturón de Orión. Es una de las nebulosas más brillantes que existen, y puede ser observada a simple vista sobre el cielo nocturno. Wikipedia
Distancia a la Tierra: 1.344 años luz
Edad: 3 millones de años
Magnitud: 4
Descubridor: Christiaan Huygens
Coordenadas: Ascensión recta 83,822°, Declinación 5,391°
It's that time of year when the temperature and the leaves drop and the sun sets earlier giving rise to long, dark cool nights. It is around this time the mighty constellation of Orion the Hunter strides up into the early night sky, bringing with it all the astronomical activity of that region of sky. The most famous of which are the Great Orion Nebula (M42) in the middle of Orion's sword, and the Horsehead Nebula near the left end of Orion's Belt.
This picture is of the Great Orion Nebula, M42. The nebula is only 1,500 light-years away, making it the closest, large, star-forming region to Earth and giving it such a bright appearance that it looks like a star to the naked eye.
I have taken pictures of this before and no doubt will again.
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Picture taken using:
Seestar S50 with LP filter
229 Lights at 10 seconds
Bortle 4 sky.
Integrated and processed in PixInsight.
Captions added in Photoshop CS4
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image by way of the European Southern Observatory of the Orion Nebula. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The Great Nebula in Orion is featured in this sweeping image from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The Orion Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion Nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.
The metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full Moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion Nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.
Astronomers now realize that the Orion Nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame Nebula. This complex in our Milky Way Galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light.
Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light.
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of stars in the gas clouds of the Orion Nebula. Slightly lurid color/processing variant.
Original caption: This new view of the Orion nebula highlights fledgling stars hidden in the gas and clouds. It shows infrared observations taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel mission, in which NASA plays an important role.
A star forms as a clump of this gas and dust collapses, creating a warm glob of material fed by an encircling disk. These dusty envelopes glow brightest at longer wavelengths, appearing as red dots in this image. In several hundred thousand years, some of the forming stars will accrete enough material to trigger nuclear fusion at their cores and then blaze into stardom.
The nebula is found below the three belt stars in the famous constellation of Orion the Hunter, which appears at night in northern latitudes during fall and then throughout winter. At a distance of around 1,500 light-years away from Earth, the nebula cannot quite be seen with the naked eye. Binoculars or a small telescope, however, are all it takes to get a good look in visible light at this stellar factory.
Spitzer is designed to see shorter infrared wavelengths than Herschel. By combining their observations, astronomers get a more complete picture of star formation. The colors in this image relate to the different wavelengths of light, and to the temperature of material, mostly dust, in this region of Orion. Data from Spitzer show warmer objects in blue, with progressively cooler dust appearing green and red in the Herschel datasets. The more evolved, hotter embryonic stars thus appear in blue.
The combined data traces the interplay of the bright, young stars with the cold and dusty surrounding clouds. A red garland of cool gas also notably runs through the Trapezium, the intensely bright region that is home to four humungous blue-white stars, and up into the rich star field.
Infrared data at wavelengths of 8.0 and 24 microns from Spitzer are rendered in blue. Herschel data with wavelengths of 70 and 160 microns are represented in green and red, re