Barnards Loop (Sh 2-276)2x1 mosaic, 50mm
[email protected], ZWO294MC. 15x180s,120x,-5deg RGB + 25x300s,120x,-5d Ha for each half of mosaic about 2 hours for each half of the field. (14/11/2021 and 3/12/2021 -- a lot of rain and clouds lately!) Barnards Loop is thought to be a remnant of a supernova explosion 2 million years ago. This was a learning curve for the big one (BIG one) - the Gum nebula - which will need a two panel mosaic with a 19mm lens if the clouds ever go away. I was happy with the sharpness of the loop but the colour and prominence of the main stars would give a better feel of it being Orion if they were more obvious. When you look at Orion at night those three stars in a row are what catch the eye, and rigel and betelgeuse deserve their place also. Still the horsehead flame and less so the great nebula came up pretty well. I will try processing it again.
If I ever take this again I'll remember to take a series of short RGB to get the area around the trapezium as it is burned out despite care in processing, and like the horsehead its the where everyone will zoom in if they happen to look at this picture. It's a big target, hence the mosaic. But its pretty amazing to think that that is only a tiny part of the giant molecular cloud and that we can only see a few bits that are lit up by young O stars, the rest being only visible to the radio astronomers.
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