M42 – Orion Nebula

M 42

The Orion Nebula

A colorful place

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Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like The Great Nebula in Orion. Visible as a faint celestial smudge to the naked-eye, the nearest large star-forming region sprawls across this sharp telescopic image, recorded on a cold January night in dark skies from West Virginia, planet Earth. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula’s glowing gas surrounds hot, young stars. About 40 light-years across, it lies at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away within the same spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy as the Sun. Along with dusty bluish reflection nebula NGC 1977 and friends near the top of the frame, the eye-catching nebulae represent only a small fraction of our galactic neighborhood’s wealth of star-forming material. Within the well-studied stellar nursery, astronomers have also identified what appear to be numerous infant solar systems.

The Orion Nebula in Orion

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Technical card

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ObjectM 42 / M 43
Imaging telescopesCelestron Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph 11″
Imaging cameraQHY268M
Mount iOptron CEM60
GuidingSkywatcher Evoguide 50ED, QHY174M
FilterBaader 3.5 nm f/2 Ultra-Highspeed-H-Alpha Filter, Baader UHC-L, RGB, Hutech LPS-P2
AccessoriesBaader UFC, Baader UFC-Tilter,  Celestron Focus Motor for SCT
Integration28.5 hours (H-alpha: 305×120″, LPS: 223×30″, UHC-L: 292×60″, Red: 215×60″, Green: 260×60″, Blue: 222×60″)
Dates of recording15 nights between February and March 2023
AstroBinLink

ORION PRINT & RAW DATA

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