Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  M 78  ·  NGC 2064  ·  NGC 2067  ·  NGC 2068  ·  NGC 2071  ·  VdB59  ·  VdB60

Image of the day 01/13/2018

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    M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes
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    M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion

    Image of the day 01/13/2018

    Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
      M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes
      Powered byPixInsight

      M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion

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      Description

      M78 is a reflection nebula that's a part of the Orion Molecular Cloud complex. This area is a complex combination of reflection nebula and dark dust lanes and it's a region that I've wanted to image for many years. Now that I have a good view of the southern sky, it was finally possible. Unfortunately, mediocre seeing and occasional windy nights through the new moon cycle made it tough to accumulate enough high quality images to finish this image. I would have liked 1.5 x- 2x as much data but the conditions just wouldn't cooperate (at least for now.) Correctly color calibrating this image was particularly challenging because blue light from many of the stars in this region is filtered out so that they appear more red than they would in open space. Photometric calibration simply doesn't work well. I tried virtually every reference standard available before simply using the balance determined by the filters themselves (i.e. no calibration other than background neutralization.) Maybe I'll gather more data on this one to try to clean it up a bit but for now, I think that it's a pretty good start.

      As always, C&C is welcome so let me know what you think.

      John

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      Revisions

        M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes
        Original
        M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes
        B
        M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes
        C
      • Final
        M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes
        D

      C

      Description: Whitened faint red stars

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      D

      Description: De-emphasized slight gradient

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      M78 - Another Beautiful Reflection Nebula in Orion, John Hayes

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