Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  41 Ori A)  ·  41 Ori C  ·  41 Ori D  ·  42 Ori)  ·  43 Ori)  ·  44 Ori)  ·  48 Ori  ·  50 Ori)  ·  Flame Nebula  ·  Great Orion Nebula  ·  IC 420  ·  IC 431  ·  IC 432  ·  IC 434  ·  IC 435  ·  Lower Sword  ·  M 42  ·  M 43  ·  Mairan's Nebula  ·  NGC 1973  ·  NGC 1975  ·  NGC 1976  ·  NGC 1977  ·  NGC 1980  ·  NGC 1981  ·  NGC 1982  ·  NGC 2023  ·  NGC 2024  ·  Orion B  ·  Orion Nebula  ·  And 11 more.
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Heart of Orion, Brett Nickeson
Heart of Orion
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Heart of Orion

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Heart of Orion, Brett Nickeson
Heart of Orion
Powered byPixInsight

Heart of Orion

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Description

There is no more spectacular area of the night sky than Orion in my opinion.  This stretch of dusty space from the Flame to the Horsehead and finally to the Great Nebula is what first got me into astrophotography.  I had aspirations to capture this mosaic for a couple years while dealing with never ending mount issues.  After a new mount, it was one of my first targets and turned out to be one of my favorite images I've ever taken.

This image was a labor of love to create. It consists of around 18 hours of total exposure and was taken over four nights spanning three months and three different states. Being the winter, it was also well below freezing each night I was out and since I'm a mobile imager, it was several very cold night attempting sleep in the truck. It's a mosaic of four images across and took probably around 15 total hours to process. I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out.

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Heart of Orion, Brett Nickeson