Breeding stars (Orion special - part II)

The Great Nebula in Orion (also know as M42 or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula located south of the Orion's belt and part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. It is one of the brightest nebula in the sky and visible in plain sight. It has an estimated size of 24 ly (apparent size of 64x60 arcmins). This nebula is one of the most studied and photographed of the winter skies in the northern hemisphere and has shed light on how the stars are formed.

This nebula is the closest region of massive star formation in the sky, a star nursery where the stars are born. This process involves a collapsing cloud of gas and dust until it reaches enough pressure and mass to initiate the fusion process in the core of the newly born star. The core of this nebula is very bright due to the amount of just born stars inside it.

This picture show also M43, separated of the main nebula by a dust lane, and NGC 1973/5/7, the Running Man Nebula, which together picture the shape of (exactly), a running man.

Due to the high range of lights in this nebula I had to try an HDR photography. This means that the final image is composed of two different exposures, a shorter one for showing the core without burning it, and a longer exposure for revealing the details in the gas clouds. 

The short exposure is composed of 30x45'' lights, 6 darks and 10 bias. The long exposure is composed of 13x4' lights, 3 darks and 10 bias. Both exposures where stacked separately with DeepSky Stacker and processed together using StarTools, later merged using this same software. 

Again, the amount of detail in the nebula that I was able to picture with the small ETX-70 (of course thanks to the new mount), it just left me speechless once I started processing the images.

ENJOY!!

And the image annotated:

I've seen things... (Orion special - part I)

"I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe; attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost... in time, like... tears... in rain."

This is probably one of the most famous Sci-Fi speeches ever written,  the ending soliloquy of Blade Runner. I don't know what inspired Ridley Scott to make this reference to Orion but I can tell that this constellation is one of the most interesting areas in the sky with plenty of DSO to enjoy in just a few degrees in the sky.

As a child, since I first heard the ending speech of Blade Runner, I wondered about the shoulder of Orion and particularly what could this Tannhauser Gate thing be, imagining space portals leading to different dimensions... well, finally I managed to photograph it, or at least what  Ridley's inspiration could be, M78.

M78 is one of the forgotten ones in Orion. Compared to other nebulae that I'll cover in another entries, is less spectacular and quite smaller but it is one of my favorites. M78 is a reflection nebula located at 1,600 ly and a size of 5 ly across the "gate". The picture also shows another nebulae forming a greater complex object together : NGC2064, NGC2067 and NGC2071. Also, M78 is located on a big dust area. You can see on the wide-field picture how the number of stars visible changes dramatically from the left to the right.

The image is composed of 40 lights of 2,5', with 10 darks and 20 bias. Stacked with DSS and processed with StarTools and Photoshop. Although this picture is not as spectacular as the previous galaxies, for me is quite a big deal picturing it with the small 70mm and the unmodified DSLR. 

As usual,  ENJOY!

Defying the laws of the TV-Series C.S.I., I decided to crop and amplify the image to check if I was able to increase the size and the detail. To do this I used the 3x Drizzle algorithm designed by NASA for the Hubble deep sky images. No luck, they must be using a different algorithm ;) but you can see it in bigger (noisier) size.

And of course, the annotated image over the widefield: