Comet Enthusiast

M42 & M43 The Great Orion Nebulae & it’s Core Complex known as the Trapezium Region. Image Credit: John Chumack

The Great Orion nebula is one of the brightest nebulae visible in the night sky. It is located about 1300 light years away in the southern part of the Orion’s belt.

We’ve collected several amazing images of the Great Orion nebula submitted by readers online. Here’s hoping that you’ll enjoy them as much as we did!

The image above was obtained by John Chumack from the high res close-up image of Trapezium taken with his 10” scope ( 30 sec., 1 minute, & 5 minutes) in his backyard in Dayton combined with the image taken using his homemade 16” scope data (10 minutes) taken at his observatory in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

“My image Data was captured in 2010 & 2011 and was then combined. I used my Modified Canon Rebel Xsi (Baader Filter) @ ISO 400, dark frames subtracted, and post processing in Adobe. Total exposure time for all Data was 16.5 minutes.

I processed it for the Trapezium’s core, I wanted to show all the small dark nebula / Dusty Bok Globules buried in that bright Zone, which is often over exposed in most images of this region!

It came out very detailed, especially the Trapezium region and its bright core stars which are also individually visible!”

More images below!

The Great Orion Nebula taken from Italy. Image Credit: Marco T.

Marco T. captured this image using a Canon EOS 500D camera. Here are some specs he provided:
80x40sec 800iso – 31dark – 30bias temp. 6°c
SKYWATCHER ED80 PRO BLACK DIAMOND – camera guide QHY5
HIGH light pollution (Rome – Italy)

Orion Nebula. Image Credit: Kevin Jung

This image was taken by Kevin Jung at the James C. Veen Observatory in Lowell, Michigan. It was a stack of three individual 60-second exposures captured using a Canon EOS 40D camera.

Orion and Running Man Nebulae. Image Credit: Brendan Alexander

Brendan Alexander took this image in Donegal, Ireland on January 6, 2011. He used a Celestron Omni XLT 150 telescope, Celestron CG5-GT (unguided) and a self-modified Canon 1000D. Here are a number of specs provided by Brendan:
Additional: Astronomik cls clip LP filter.
Stacking & Processing: DeepSkyStacker & Photoshop CS5
Exposure: 8 x Five minute exposures (20Darks). Core- 20x 90sec (10Darks), 20 x 30sec (20Darks) 20 x 8sec (20Darks) 40mins total exposure.

The Great Orion Nebula. Image Credit: Patrick Cullis

Patrick Cullis captured this image using a 4″ Meade SCT with 5D Mk II on Orion Sirius Equatorial Mount.

“A new go at the Orion Nebula. I used ten minute exposures this time, which brought out a lot more of the faint nebulosity, but blew out the trapezium stars.”

The Great Orion Nebula. Image Credit: Ken Lord

This photo was submitted to us by Ken Lord. He took this image on December 1, 2011 using a 190mm F5.3 Skywatcher Maksutov Newtonian telescope and Canon T1i DSLR at 30 seconds exposure and ISO 1600.

“Orion is high in the sky now, so I figured I’d see how it looks now with the darker skies at my new home.

It’s dark enough that I could use ISO1600 instead of 800 on a 30 second exposure and still have a lot less light pollution.

This is a JPG straight from the camera, not stacked, I shot 60x 30 second exposures, the CR2′s are still waiting to be stacked and processed.”

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Dianne Castaneda is the Assistant Editor of Universe Today. She's also a Civil Engineer who has worked for a Government-sponsored University research project. Her interests are physics, traveling and music.

Tagged as:
Astrophotos,
M42,
Orion Nebula