The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279) (Niall MacNeill)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: 41 the01 Ori · 42 c Ori · 43 the02 Ori · 44 iot Ori · 45 Ori · De Mairan's nebula · Great Orion Nebula · Hatysa · LBN 974 · LDN 1640 · Lower Sword · M 42 · M 43 · Mairan's Nebula · NGC 1973 · NGC 1975 · NGC 1976 · NGC 1977 · NGC 1980 · NGC 1982 · Orion Nebula · Sh2-279 · Sh2-281 · The star 42Ori · The star 45Ori · The star θ1Ori · The star θ2Ori · The star ιOri · the Running Man Nebula

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The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279)

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The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279)

Well the New Year got off to a flying start.

Since I had the C14 set up with the Hyperstar and having found a good method of collimating it, I decided to go for some wide field targets. I captured all the data for this last night, in just over an hour (68 mins).

With the Hyperstar the data capture is ~ 33X faster than at Prime Focus, so in an hour I captured as much signal as I would have in over 30 hours at Prime Focus. The penalty of course is image scale, but with the smaller pixels of the ZWO ASI 1600MC, the image scale of 1.19 “/pxl is not too shabby. cf 0.47 “/pxl at Prime Focus with the SBIG 16803

So this was captured as follows:

OTA: C14 Edge HD
Mount: Paramount MX+
Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MC
Lens: Hyperstar
Date of capture: 1/1/2022
Lights: 68 mins integration
181 x 1 sec
38 x 5 secs
56 x 30 secs
34 x 60 secs
Darks: 35
Bias: 35
Flat Darks: 35
Flats: 20

This target is well known as a challenge from a dynamic range perspective. Therefore I made captures at 1 sec, 5 secs, 30 sec and 60 secs, all unguided. I used the HDR Combination process to good effect combining the MasterStacks from all 4 exposure times, before employing the HDRMT process to fine tune the combination. This is a fine balance between have an unnatural core because it is too dim looking and having it too bright and blowing out the Trapezium Stars. I hope you feel I got the balance about right.

I feel I have to come back to this target from time to time. Although we have all seen so many versions, it never ceases to leave me awestruck.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5357496
PixInsight job	7V0HKNLLNXV4835SWHT5VTHLV4V0D0H0
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h35m09s.93
RA (top/left)	05h33m51s.20
RA (top/right)	05h32m22s.24
RA (bottom/right)	05h36m28s.88
RA (bottom/left)	05h37m57s.45

Dec (center)	-05°15′25″.1
Dec (top/left)	-04°25′40″.2
Dec (top/right)	-05°48′44″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	-06°05′07″.0
Dec (bottom/left)	-04°42′01″.8

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The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279)

The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279)

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Image Index:

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The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279)

The Great Nebula in Orion M42 and the Running Man Nebula (Sh2-279)

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