So to complete the project here in the Belt of Orion which had the objective of trying to find interesting things hiding in plain site, I worked on Mintaka to see what might be there.
Mintaka is part of the OB1 Association which includes the three stars of Orion's Belt. Mintaka is a Class O giant with a mass of 24x that of our sun and a luminosity of some 190,000x that of our sun. Amazing facts in and of themselves. This is a multiple star system with one of Mintaka's companions clearly visible at about the 1 o'clock position relative to Mintaka in this image.
One of our colleagues
@Daniel Erickson mentioned in the narrative of an image he made of Denebola that most of us try to "deal with " or "manage" bright stars instead of featuring them. That comment made an impression on me and for the two projects I tried to accomplish, this image and a recent image of Alnilam, I decided to go straight at these two brilliant stars to see what might might be there.
With new tools, particularly GHS, I was able to render these two bright stars in a way I could never achieve in the past. This allowed me to reveal some things I did not expect.
In this image, I was very surprised to find all of the gas and dust that appear to be surrounding Mintaka. Not sure of the geometry of all of this stuff but still, I found this to be very interesting.
I came upon this idea rather late in the season for Orion so not all that much opportunity to gather data and I wonder how much better this could be with more integration time. Of course, the weather has not been cooperative as well so perhaps I will revisit this one next season and see what more can be done with this. But as it is, I have enjoyed these two proejcts.
As always, comments and criticism is encouraged! Clear Skies and good health to you all.
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