Wednesday, January 22, 2014

M42 Great Nebula in Orion

 


The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the above deep image in assigned colors highlighted by emission in oxygen and hydrogen, wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly evident. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. These nurseries contain much hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.


Technical Details:

Optics:Vixen ED81s @ f/5.2
Mount: HEQ5 synscan Pro
Guiding: Skywatcher 9x50 finderscope+DMK21AU04
Camera: SBIG ST2000XM
Filter Wheel: SBIG CFW9
Filters: Baader Ha, Astronomik LRGB
CCD Temperature: -10 degrees Celsius
Constellation: Orion
Date: 22 Jan, 2014
Location: Kifisia, Greece
Exposure:
Lum : 120 min (40x3 min)
Red : 30 min (15x2 min)
Green : 30 min (15x2 min)
Blue : 30 min (15x2 min)
Binning: 1x1(L,R,G,B)
Total exposure 3.5 h