Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  NGC 1973  ·  NGC 1975  ·  NGC 1977  ·  NGC 1981  ·  The star 42Ori  ·  The star 45Ori  ·  Upper Sword  ·  the Running Man Nebula
Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula, Joe Niemeyer
Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula
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Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula

Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula, Joe Niemeyer
Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula

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Description

March in Colorado added the joys of bitter cold, high winds, and snow to this capture of Sharpless 279 (Sh2-279), better known as the Running Man Nebula. Use your imagination and you can see the man's arms, legs, and head. He lies just above the famous Orion Nebula in Orion's Sword, however the Running Man is much dimmer. The Running Man is a dark region of ionized hydrogen and dust embedded in a bluish reflection nebula known as NGC 1977. An open cluster of bright stars (NGC 1981) illuminates the nebulae in this complex of gasses and dust 1,600 light years from Earth.

This was my first image to use autoguiding, where a separate camera in the image train locks onto a star at the periphery and then passes commands to the mount via guiding software to make fine corrections to keep the image centered. This allows for much longer exposures compared to unguided images. This image is a stack of thirty 180-second ISO 1600 exposures at 2350mm FL, calibrated with 20 flat frames and 10 dark frames, and then post-processed in Photoshop.

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Sh2-279 Running Man Nebula, Joe Niemeyer