The Orion Nebula

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Joel
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The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks, brown dwarfs, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.

M42-final-large-jpeg by Joel Spencer, on Flickr
 
Jannyfox said:
Lots of lovely detail there Joel. You do have a few artifacts from pushing the processing a bit too far. It's so easily done. I'm just as guilty.
Click to expand...

Thanks Janny. Yes it's a trade off between pulling out the detail really and the exposure time which was 30 minutes in total. This winter hopefully I'll be able to get lots more data.
 
Thanks guys, this photo was my first go at photographing anything in Space apart from the Moon, and therefore my first real attempt at astrophotography (where star tracking is needed). I took this photo in February the night before my Birthday and processed it the next day :) It might sound boring to some, processing an astrophotography image which basically took all day - as I was learning the process as I was going along, but it's a Birthday I'll remember and I've had ones which I don't. I was thrilled to photograph something so majestic and I'll never forget that! It's not the greatest photograph of Orion but it's a very special one to me.
 
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