Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  31 Ori  ·  45 Ori  ·  46 eps Ori  ·  48 sig Ori  ·  50 zet Ori  ·  Alnilam  ·  Alnitak  ·  B33  ·  Great Nebula in Orion  ·  HD290508  ·  HD290509  ·  HD290510  ·  HD290511  ·  HD290512  ·  HD290514  ·  HD290518  ·  HD290519  ·  HD290521  ·  HD290524  ·  HD290525  ·  HD290526  ·  HD290528  ·  HD290530  ·  HD290533  ·  HD290534  ·  HD290535  ·  HD290536  ·  HD290537  ·  HD290539  ·  HD290541  ·  And 569 more.
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Orion's Belt and Sword - The Orion and Horsehead Nebulae Widefield - Reprocessed, Gabriel R. Santos (grsotnas)
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Orion's Belt and Sword - The Orion and Horsehead Nebulae Widefield - Reprocessed

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Orion's Belt and Sword - The Orion and Horsehead Nebulae Widefield - Reprocessed, Gabriel R. Santos (grsotnas)
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Orion's Belt and Sword - The Orion and Horsehead Nebulae Widefield - Reprocessed

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Description

Reprocessed version of my 2015's capture of this beautiful region due to lack of new imaging opportunities and bad weather! Here is the original: http://astrob.in/163993/H/

To me, processing was much improved, more natural colors and better detail. What do you think?

====== Original Description ======

My image of this absolutely stunning image of our Night Sky; The Belt and Sword of the Contallation Orion. The stars of Orion's belt, two of which are visible in this image, are Mintaka, Alnilan and Alnitak. A little bit due North you will find the Sword of the hunter, visible to the naked eye a a fuzzy star even in modestly dark skies. That is a Nebula, the Great Orion's Nebula, catalogued as M42/43, a beatutiful, and probably the most famous Nebula in the sky (I wouldn't say it is the biggest or the most beautiful myself, because IMHO, NGC 3372 - Eta Carina is equally stunning, if not a bit better. Even though, M42 is spectacular). In the heart of it there is a group of 4 stars, the Trapezium, which looks very nice at med-high magnifications. Back on the Belt, in the bottom left corner, you can see the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae, IC 434 and NGC 2024, respectively (actually, the Horsehead is that Dark Nebula silluated against IC434, designated as Barnard 33). A lot of dust is also visible in the region.

The image was taken in a single night, but I had some problems during the session, and I actually took ~2h to finish all the frames. My 2nd battery failed, so I was with only a single Canon battery, which resisted bravely until 11pm, when it was completely drained, in the middle of one light frame. After a quick recharge, I finished the frames. However, instead of 20, I took 19 subs. It may be Murphy's Law, but "the battery will always end in the middle of a exposure". It was a productive and equally beautiful night, on a quite dark location.

Overall I'm extremely pleased and happy with this image. I didn't expect to capture that much light to really show those dust lanes. Besides, my camera is NOT MODIFIED, so it has a very limited H-alpha response, and the Horsehead region was greatly captured IMO. It don't have that puchy deep red of H-alpha, but it was better than expected.

====== End of Original Description ======

*Please check the full image 1800px - resized from original)*

Constructive criticism, comments and suggestions are more than welcome in the comments section. Thank's for taking your time to look at this image.

Taken from Rural Skies (Bortle 3-4; NELM ~6.2; SQM ~21.6*calculated), from Cristina, MG, Brazil (22ºS latitude).

Date and Time: January 19th and 20th, 2015, at 22:30h (UTC-3, start of capture)

Camera: Unmodded Canon T4i/650D, at ISO 800

Lens: Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8, at 200mm, operated at f/3.5

Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5, tracking, unguided

Exposure Detail: 19x180s (total 57min) (main deep exposure, from Dark skies) + 10x30s (total 5 minutes) (HDR for M42 core; taken from downtown Cristina, much more LP (~Bortle 5-6))

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Orion's Belt and Sword - The Orion and Horsehead Nebulae Widefield - Reprocessed, Gabriel R. Santos (grsotnas)