M42
Great Orion Nebula
February 5, 2024
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This image was take over the nights of February 2nd thru February 5th. The entire month of January had been cloudy so I took advantage of a couple of clear nights. I would have liked to have gotten more time, but the Kentucky weather just wasn't cooperating. This image consists of a total of 21hrs 46 mins and 50sec of integration time. This is made up of the following individual frames:
Lum - 61 x 20s
69 x 30s
39 x 120s
Red 70 x 20s
60 x 30s
39 x 120s
Green 70 x 20s
60 x 30s
39 x 120s
Blue 70 x 20s
60 x 30s
39 x 120s
The Great Orion Nebula is located in the constellation Orion (of course) and is about 1500 light years from Earth, making it the closest large star-forming region to Earth and giving it a relatively bright apparent magnitude of 4. Because of its brightness and prominent location just below Orion’s belt, M42 can be spotted with the naked eye, while offering an excellent peek at stellar birth for those with telescopes. It is best observed during January. Charles Messier first observed the nebula on March 4, 1769.
I took the images from my backyard observatory using an Orion ED80CF telescope with a .8x reducer making the focal length 384mm. I used the ZWO ASI 294MM Pro camera and Baader LRGB filters. I processed the subframes using PixInsight utilizing the HDR composition process to combine the various subframe lengths.
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