M42 - aka "
The Great Orion Nebula" - is a diffuse nebula in the constellation of Orion. It can be seen with the naked eye in dark skies as a fuzzy patch south of Orion's belt (
Alnitak,
Alnilam and
Mintaka).
To the left,
Sh2-279 - aka "Running Man Nebula". It looks like a reflection nebula, but there's an HII component to it as well.
The brightest stars in this shot can be seen with the naked eye even from light polluted cities as seemingly 3 little stars next to Orion's belt.
Nair al Saif,
Theta Orionis or the trapezium cluster,
45 Orionis. That region is where M42 is, covering most of the space between those stars, as can be seen. One cannot see it unaided from light polluted cities, only very dark sites. With small telescopes, a fuzzy patch is visible even with heavy light pollution, and from dark sites the view is just amazing.
M42 is one of the brightest nebulas in the night sky. This image used HDR techniques to reduce the contrast in the nebula's core. Otherwise, the core would look totally white, since the surrounding nebulosity is orders of magnitude less bright than the inner core. The trapezium (a young cluster of 8 stars, usually only 4 can be resolved in amateur photographs) is visible, barely resolvable into 4 stars. I may update this image in the future to improve resolution in that area using lucky imaging techniques, and hopefully show at least 6 stars in the cluster.
Very minimal processing was applied beyond HDR contrast reduction and the usual sky gradient removal and stretching. Very mild NR was applied, the result of which is very subtle, and also very subtle sharpening. Thus, this image should be quite faithful, reproducing almost exactly what's up there in the sky.
This is the result of 2 imaging sessions and my first multi-session integration. Quite a learning experience. See technical details if interested.
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