The Great Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula in their dusty Cloud (James R Potts)

The Great Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula in their dusty Cloud

I just can't resist getting at least one capture of this target every year. I had hoped to add this to my data from last year, but I did a poor job framing it and I just could not get my data to blend well, I tried several different methods, but always had some obvious artifacts where my images did not align.

This year I captured this over 2 nights getting just over 10 hours. I used a video tutorial from Adam Block on stretching the image in PI with GHS. My first image color looked almost identical to the image in Adam's tutorial, but Adam commented several times that he overdid some stretches and saturation so it would show up on his video. After loading the image up and comparing it to last year, I did think my first image was over saturated. What I did really like about Adam's tutorial is several methods of increasing contrast and reducing the brightness of the core. I did not get the blueish color of the core, but it didn't get too blown out and you can see the Trapezium star complex, although the detail is not quite good enough to see separation in the stars. But I like how this came out and I like the dusty nebolousity surrounding the nebula.

Outside of the main two targets:
NGC 1999 which is bottom left is a reflection nebula also known as the "Key Hole Nebula." According to the NASA website, NGC 1999 is a relic of recent star formation and it is composed of debris left over from the formation of a newborn star. The dark part, where the key hole name comes from, was once thought to be a dark nebula, but it now is thought to be a void region.

The other NGC objects 1980 & 81 are star clusters.

Original
Final
B

Texas Astronomy
Messier Objects
Suburban Astrophotography
Deep Sky Northern Hemisphere
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
William Optics GT Series
AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
The refractors!
ZWO ASIAIR PRO USERS

Nebulas

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8898451
PixInsight job	RI8QTBN74M4Z3RFGNWK7363XDDF8CT4U
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h35m33s.14
RA (top/left)	05h33m27s.69
RA (top/right)	05h29m20s.82
RA (bottom/right)	05h37m39s.31
RA (bottom/left)	05h41m44s.56

Dec (center)	-05°04′07″.7
Dec (top/left)	-03°07′17″.5
Dec (top/right)	-06°21′27″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	-07°00′48″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	-03°46′31″.5

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):