M42 Orion Nebula HDR
| Description |
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula in the Milky Way situated south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion, and is known as the middle “star” in the “sword” of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 4.0. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. M42 is estimated to be 25 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree). It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula. |
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| Data/Processing Attribution |
This is my data and processing. |
| Distances/Size |
Distance to the object: 1,300 light-years. |
| Equipment |
Mount-PlaneWave L-350; Scope-PlaneWave CDK14″, 356 mm aperture, 2563 mm focal length; Camera-Moravian C3-61000, 0.30 arcsec/pixel. |
| Observatory |
The image was captured at the Prairie Skies Astro remote observatory. |
| Exposure |
This was not an easy project. The idea was to do short and long exposures and combine them to retain the details of the Trapezium core and preserve stars. This is some details on the project 1,886 images were taken; 216 of 5s; 1,613 of 15s; 57 of 300s. Exposures: 15s- 6 hours, 43 minutes and 15 seconds; 5s- 18 minutes; 300s- 4 hours 45 minutes WBPP processing—50 hours 5 minutes Size of the project: 1.2 terabytes SHO and RGB Filters Ha-36X5= 0 hours 3 minutes O3-36X5= 0 hours 3 minutes S2-36X5 0 hours 3 minutes R-36X5= 0 hours 3 minutes G-36X5= 0 hours 3 minutes B-36X5= 0 hours 3 minutes Ha-266X15= 1 hours 6 minutes 30 seconds O3-226X15= 0 hours 56 minutes 30 seconds S2-249X15= 1 hours 2 minutes 15 seconds L-226X15= 0 hours 56 minutes 30 seconds R-213X15= 0 hours 53 minutes 15 seconds G-217X15= 0 hours 54 minutes 15 seconds B-216X15= 0 hours 54 minutes 0 seconds Ha-12X300= 1 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds O3-12X300= 1 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds S2-12X300= 1 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds R-3X90= 0 hours 15 minutes 0 seconds G-6X300= 0 hours 30 minutes 0 seconds B-6X300= 0 hours 30 minutes 0 seconds Total—11 hours, 46 minutes 15 sec Processing is done in PixInsight, Photoshop, and Lightroom Classic |