Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon (Andrew Arai)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Great Orion Nebula · Lower Sword · M 42 · M 43 · Mairan's Nebula · NGC 1973 · NGC 1975 · NGC 1976 · NGC 1977 · NGC 1980 · NGC 1982 · Orion Nebula · The star 42Ori · The star 45Ori · The star θ1Ori · The star θ2Ori · The star ιOri · the Running Man Nebula

Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon, Andrew Arai

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Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon

Powered byPixInsight

Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon

The Orion Nebula is easy to photograph but is also a difficult photographic target due to the extremely wide range of brightness. To take advantage of a very dark, transparent, but cold night at the Grand Canyon, I worked to bring out the subtle dark portions of the nebula that I had never seen in prior attempts from less pristine skies. My philosophy on this trip was to photographic one object each night and this was from my second night for astrophotography after one night for a visual tour with two friends, a night to make sure everything was working and properly aligned, and the night spent imaging the Horsehead Nebula (see my Astrobin post). Each night I drove to the darkest site within reason from my base in Sedona. The Grand Canyon was far enough that I slept in one of the lodges in the park after finishing for the night.

I am not used to pushing the processing so hard but was intrigued by the brown clouds of dust around the nebula. In a more horizontal view, the brownish dust clouds almost look like the nebula is bleeding. While most processing was in PixInsight, and this is my third or fourth object processed with the software, I did adjust levels slightly in Photoshop and added some sharpening. I'm still working on a HDR version of the Orion Nebula but that still requires more finesse.

I hope you like this image and I hope the National Parks continue to protect their clear dark skies.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4370121
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon

Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon

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Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon

Orion Nebula through Bortle 2 skies at the Grand Canyon

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