Orion Nebula

NOTES
DATE:
Saturday, November 25, 2006
TIME:
12:49 am - 1:23 am EST
CAMERA:
Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel (unmodified)
EXPOSURE:
16 minutes (16 x 1 minute @ ISO 400)
LOCATION:
Kalamazoo Nature Center - Owl Observatory
INSTRUMENT:
Meade 12" LX200 SCT @ f/6.3 with Lumicon Giant Easy Guider
PROCESSING:
Images obtained with DSLRFocus 3.  Dark frame subtracted, aligned, stacked, enhanced and cropped with Adobe Photoshop 7.0
COMMENTS:
Four degrees below the middle star in Orion’s Belt is perhaps the grandest Deep Sky Object visible from Earth.  To the unaided eye it appears as a fuzzy star, but even binoculars can reveal the basic shape seen in this photograph.  It’s the Great Nebula in Orion – a star forming region 1,600 light-years away.  The main portion of the nebula is listed as M42 in Messier’s Catalog.  The “head” of the nebula, with the star in the center, is cataloged as M43.