* I am adding this note to follow up on my discussion regarding what I thought appeared to be a variable bright section of this molecular cloud. It is known as McNeil's nebula discovered in 2004, which previously was not seen. It popped up in my Simbad search. I will not go into detail here but you can learn more on Wikipedia and related references. It has also been well highlighted by others who have posted M78 images on Astrobin. But, this is the sort of thing that gets my blood flowing. In fact, just as quickly as it fired up, it has now faded! And you CANNOT see it in the yellow highlight circle. The immediate area within and around McNeil's has many interesting objects not visible or barely visible in RGB. I think it would be super interesting to do regular photometry on this area using different wavelengths to try to see and figure out just what is happening. *

This is a subject that I will continue to pursue over the years. Currently, with the few open dates because of weather, this M78 is super tough for me. And the fact that I am also tree impaired, I have only a short window during any one night. Because of this, it was my first target with my new camera. With only 45 sec subs, I could have used a lot more than 78 subs. I will reexamine my exposure and gain settings in the future for this target. But with the relatively short total time you will have to excuse the rather grainy, subdued result.

It is presented here oriented as one would view this if standing in their yard (in the Northern Hemisphere) and looking up at Orion. M78 sort of dangles from the Barnard Loop and you can see some of that structure in the upper left corner of the frame. It would be cool to get a mosaic of a somewhat larger field of view for this...

M78 is one of a number of very potent star-forming regions that has vast areas of dust and gas with stars clearly embedded or obscured by these clouds. To me, it is exciting because it is known to harbor stars at every stage of early development. It is my hope to image this and others like it in both visible and NIR/IR in the future looking for these nascent stars. In particular, there is a region in this field of view that perplexes me because I see throughout the last decade of images posted on Astrobin differences in this one region in particular. It may simply be that people using different filters are simply recording the difference in what their gear sees. I wonder though if the differences maybe differences in stellar activity? Normally, I would research this area via Simbad or some other, but no time right now. If I get more or better data to post, I may follow up in the future on what is known by real astronomers of this area.

But it will very much help me if I can lose the trees!

For QHY268c users: Mode 1, gain 60, Offset 12, 45 second subs. I considered this a Very Low Dynamic Range subject, but I think I may be wrong. Don't ask me why, since it is one of the brightest reflection nebulas in the sky. If I get back to this and collect more subs, I may choose Mode 3, gain 0 (very high full well of ~90,000) and take longer exposures. Or Mode 1 at gain 0. I have decently dark skies. Just need to get good tracking.