Belt, Sword, Loop (Graeme Coates)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Part of the constellation Orion (Ori) · The star Alnilam (εOri) · The star Alnitak (ζOri)

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Belt, Sword, Loop

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Belt, Sword, Loop

An area of winter sky that surely needs little introduction. This is a widefield shot of central Orion, showing the three belt stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka and the “sword” (Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula). The whole region is surrounded by the arc of Barnard’s Loop, a 2 million year old supernova remnant (the precursor of this was in a multiple star system and created several “runaway stars” including AE Aurigae, Mu Columbae and 53 Arietis), as well as a multitude of other nebulae and dust clouds that form part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

Around Alnitak, the easternmost star of the belt, the Horsehead Nebula (B33) and surrounding hydrogen emission is present, as well as the slightly more orange Flame Nebula (NGC2024) to its east.

Also visible is the reflection nebula complex containing M78 and further towards the top of the image is the dark nebula LDN 1622, sometimes called “The Bogeyman”. To the west (right) of the Orion Nebula is Sh2-278, with further fainter areas of nebulosity beyond this surrounding Eta Orionis. These correspond to members of the LBN catalogue (LBN 907, 910, 915, 919, 937, 942, 945), though much more signal is needed to really get these to show well!

My site isn't very dark (though not as bad as many) - there was a lot of persuasion needed to get rid of fairly severe gradients, especially to the bottom of the image - a lot more exposure, a dedicated cooled camera and darker skies would help enormously for this target.

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	3258812
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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Belt, Sword, Loop

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