Orion Nebula - M42 (Bruce Rohrlach)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: 41 Ori A) · 41 Ori C · 41 Ori D · 43 Ori) · Great Orion Nebula · M 42 · M 43 · Mairan's Nebula · NGC 1976 · NGC 1982 · Orion Nebula · The star Mizan Batil II (θ2 Ori · The star Trapezium (θ1 Ori A · The star θ1 Ori C · The star θ1 Ori D

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Orion Nebula - M42

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Orion Nebula - M42

A quick process on some L-RGB data acquired earlier this week from M42 - the Great Nebula in Orion. I tried to push this deeper than my previous versions 4 years ago, this time with 5 hours of exposure.

Unfortunately I was battling the moon on the 2 successive nights that it took to acquire the data for this image, so by the time light pollution algorithms were applied to remove ambient moonlight gradients in post processing (to increase contrast), much of the beautiful peripheral nebulosity was stripped away. The only way around that is to collect more data, and on a night with no moon and preferably away from Melbournes suburban light.

30-40 light years in diameter, this nebulous cocoon of gas is presently spawning around a thousand new stars. The trapezium cluster at the heart of M42 is over-exposed. The 5 brightest stars of the trapezium are each 15-30 solar masses in size.

Luminance - 2 hours exposure (240 x 30secs)
Red filter - 1 hour exposure (120 x 30secs)
Green filter - 1 hour exposure (120 x 30secs)
Blue filter - 1 hour exposure (120 x 30secs)
Peltier cooler on camera chip set to -20 Celsius.

M42 always reminds me of a great Kumul (Bird of Paradise) flying through our sector of the Milky Way.

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5959173
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Orion Nebula - M42

Orion Nebula - M42

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Orion Nebula - M42

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