The Constellation Of Orion Mosaic
Captured over 3 nights from Grand Mesa Observatory, Purdy Mesa Colorado using the full frame QHY367C one shot color CMOS camera on a Rokinon 135mm F2 lens stopped down to F4.
This is a cropped 3 panel mosaic covering an area from left to right in the image: Sharpless 264 “The Lambda Orionis Ring” or otherwise known as The Angel Fish Nebula and including well known objects such as The Orion and Horsehead Nebulae, M78, LDN1622 to Sharpless 276 otherwise known as Barnards Loop.
Covering 25.5 x 12.6 degrees of sky, this is big enough for the moon to fit over 600 times.
Total Integration time just over 6 hours
See the original high resolution image here
www.flickr.com/photos/terryhancock/40008333340/in/datepos...Dominating the night sky from December through March, the ancient constellation Orion is one of the most famous star groups in the heavens. Five thousand years ago, the ancient Sumerians imagined this group of stars as their legendary hero Gilgamesh. The ancient Greeks associated these stars with a mighty hunter adorned with belt and sword, holding a westward facing shield in his left hand and an upraised club in his right. In greek literature the figure shown in the constellation became known as Orion The hunter. Orion’s prominent shape can be recognized easily in the attached annotated image of Orion but the beauty of the objects within Orion can only be seen when photographed.
Many of the brilliant blue-white stars that make the constellation Orion so striking were formed in the last 5 to 8 million years, which makes them quite young by astronomical standards. Some of these young stars are part of the “Gould Belt”, a tilted ring of bright stars nearly centered on our solar system. The belt may have formed when a large cloud of gas from outside the Milky Way smashed into the plane of our galaxy at a shallow angle and compressed clouds of interstellar gas and dust, triggering the formation of new stars. Stars continue to form in and around Orion. The most prominent star-forming region in the constellation, and one of the brightest in the night sky, is the famous Orion Nebula. A favorite target of most star-gazers, it’s visible as the fuzzy middle “star” in the Sword of Orion, just south of the three stars of Orion’s Belt. At a distance of 1,340 light years, this enormous, elegant, batwing-shaped nebula gives us a front-row view of star formation in real time.
Image capture details
Terry Hancock downunderobservatory.com
Location: GrandMesaObservatory.com Purdy Mesa, Colorado
Dates: December 10,18 and 24th 2017
RGB 119 x 1 min, 187 x 2 min
Camera: QHY367C
Gain 2850, Offset 76 with Dark Frames no Flat.
Optics: Rokinon 135mm F2 Telephoto Lens @ F4
Focusing: David Lane's Reveal Focus Filter
EQ Mount: Piggyback on 12" RC, Paramount ME
Image Acquisition software Maxim DL5
Pre Processed in Pixinsight
Post Processed in Photoshop
Read more about Orion in our e-book "The Armchair Astronomer" it's cheaper than a pint of Ale or a Gourmet Coffee
cosmicpursuits.com/astronomy-courses-and-e-books/armchair...
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