M42, M43 and NGC1977 The Running Man
Probably the most spectacular deep sky object of the all. Just visible with the naked eye as a fuzzy patch in the "sword" of orion nebulosity starts to become clear with binoculars. With a telescope it becomes possible to make out the star cluster at the core of the nebula known as the trapezium. 4 stars can be split with small telescopes however with good optics and larger aperture it can be possible to discern another 2 stars, close doubles, the so called E and F stars. The whole area is made up of highly energized hydrogen which emits red light in the Ha channel. The trapezium is an area of very energetic new star formation. Light from these stars reflects off the interstellar dust producing the pale blue areas of nebulosity most marked around the Running Man. In areas of less intense illumination areas of dust are shown up as areas of dark nebulosity.
M42 is actually the lower portion of nebulosity, M43 is the area immediately above which, to my eye, looks like Rip Van Winkle in his night cap!.
One of the challenges for imaging this area is the huge variation in light intensity of the area. The trapezium is very bright but the outer portions of nebulosity is rather dim. To produce an image which shows both without burning out the core calls for processing different parts of the image differently and then combining them in a way that doesn't show the joins. In the image above I've used layer masks in Photoshop.
This image was taken as a first light trial for my new QHY8 camera. Although it contains a fair amount of detail the dimmer areas are too noisy owing to the short overall exposure. The session was brought to a halt as Orion disappeared behind my house!
Date: 24th February 2008.
Scope: William Optics FLT110 guided with WO ZS66.
Camera: QHY8 with SX Lodestone guide camera.
Mount: Takahashi EM200.
Capture and processing details: Captured and combined with Maxim. 10x3mins, 10x2mins and 12x1min. IR block filter. Processed in Photoshop.