M42 - The Great Orion Nebula (Guangyan (astrosymmetry))

M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

Link: www.astrosymmetry.com

M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

Link: www.astrosymmetry.com

M42 is a tumultuous region of interstellar dust and gas where thousands of new stars are being born. Gigantic caverns are carved out by the stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation of massive O-class stars at core of the nebula known as the Trapezium.

I tried to capture the true colours of this nebula by making the drive over the mountain pass to get out of the Seattle light pollution. The red hues in the image come from Hydrogen Alpha recombination at 656.3nm, while the blue violet colours come from reflected light of massive, blue stars in the Trapezium. Further away from the core, the enveloping dust reveals its brown colours.

I used my new Newtonian for this image (still much to tweak and adjust and it's very much a work in progress) and while I had some focus drift issues and perhaps imperfect collimation, I think the overall image turned out acceptable. I only managed about 2.5 hours of imaging on the target before it got too low in the sky. Unfortunately, a nearby yard's flood lights and caused some loss in contrast as well as some stray reflections in the image. Lights from passing cars, said focus errors, and occasional wind gusts led to a total of 120 min of useable frames.

This image represents a culmination of sorts of many things I've worked on in the past year since beginning astrophotography, but also still has many flaws which I can still improve in many ways in both capture and process. I hope you enjoy the image as much as I did creating it.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	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

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	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

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.

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.

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M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

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Image Index:

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M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

M42 - The Great Orion Nebula

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