The Great Nebula in Orion
M42 is one of the most well known and studied deep space objects (DSO’s) in the night sky. Located as the central ‘star’ of Orion’s Sword, the diffuse emission/reflection nebula is visible to the naked eye even in moderately light polluted urban skies.
At a distance of approximately 1,344 light years this is the closest region of star formation to the Earth and it’s study has assisted in the development of theories on star and planetary formation.
The colours of the nebula range from red (Ha emission) into blue violet (reflection) and even green (O emission). The source energy for the emission and reflection regions comes from the massive, hot, bright O type stars at that form the trapezium asterism.
After a drought of imaging opportunities it was finally time to try out the gear on M42 for the first time.
My first attempts at imaging the M42 nebula during a visit to a client minesite on Halmahera Island, as well as a comparison from downloaded data.