The Orion Nebula M42

© Greg Gibbs. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image without my permission. All Rights Reserved.

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located about 1,300 light years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. Also featured in this pic is M43 and a portion of The Running Man Nebula (NGC 1973, 1975 and 1977)

I have been itching to image this nebula properly ever since I got all my astrophotography setup working ok. It is currently only rising above the horizon at about 2am, which is not ideal, but I couldn't wait any longer, and the weather is still cold enough so that noise isn't much of an issue.

31/08/2011
3am (Temperature 1 degree Celsius)
Canon EOS 1000D
Baader Coma Corrector
10 inch (25cm) F/4 Newtonian Reflector Telescope
NEQ6 PRO Computerised Goto Mount
Orion 80mm ShortTube Guide Scope
Synguider Autoguider
20 X 3 minute exposures
plus 10 X 30 seconds exposures for the core
ISO 400
Dark Frames subtracted (20 X 3min plus 10 X 30 seconds)
Images stacked and alligned in Deep Sky Stacker
Final processing in Photoshop Elements 8.0