A Mighty Hunter Rises — Adventures in Astro

*My photo of the Orion Nebula captured under a bright suburban sky using the DSLR and* *William Optics RedCat 51 II telescope*!

Maybe this is just a blast from the past of my own childhood, but I feel like “Orion’s Belt” might be one of the most recognizable constellations in the night sky. The entire constellation of course is Orion or “The Hunter” as he’s known in Greek mythology and is made up of a club, belt, lion and a sword.

Tonight we’ll hit below the belt and point our cameras toward the middle of the sword in Orion. To the naked eye, it might appear as just another bright star but its actually a stunning diffuse nebula packed with hydrogen, ionized oxygen, other gases and space dust (that’s the technical term right?).

*Notice the different parts of the constellation Orion in this screenshot from Stellarium; mid-sword is our target!*
*Image Credit: Courtesy of* *Stellarium*

Also known as Messier 42, the Orion Nebula tends to be a very popular astrophotography target. Not only is it a gorgeous combination of atomic gases and stars, its bright core is easy to find and frame with a variety of lenses.

M42 is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 4.0 and is quite large. For reference, the bright core of the Andromeda Galaxy weighs in with an apparent magnitude of about 3.1.

There are many fantastic images taken of this nebula both in the visible light spectrum and the invisible, such as infrared. Due to the high amounts of ionized hydrogen and oxygen, the Orion Nebula is also a great candidate for capturing narrow-band data using a variety of narrowband filters.

My photo above is about 1 hour and 45 mins of integrated data, taken with a broadband light pollution filter, in a bortle class 6 sky and 70% moon. My goal is to spend even more time imaging this target to achieve greater contrast; I also plan on using a dual-narrowband filter next time to really make the colors pop!