Orion's Belt & Sword

The constellation of Orion is one of the most recognizable constellations, and it contains a vast array of deep sky objects. M42, the Great Orion Nebula is the most photographed deep sky object, and its star forming region is visible to the naked eye. Just above the Orion Nebula is the Running Man nebula, which resembles a man in motion. These objects form the Sword of Orion.

On the left of the picture, the three Belt stars, Alintak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, form a distinct visible line. Below Alintak is the aptly named Horse Head nebula, or Barnard 33, a remarkable Dark Nebula, silhouetted against a beautiful rolling wave of Emission Nebula. Below Alintak is the Flame nebula, a combination of an Emission and Dark Nebula, while tucked in the bottom left corner, resides M78, a deep Blue Reflection Nebula intertwined with several Dark Nebula.

This picture is a 4 pane mosaic, covering approximately 7x4 degrees of sky taken over 21 nights in January, February and March 2011. 4 hours of Luminance, and 4 hours of Ha were combined with 2 hours of Red, Green, and Blue per panel. Further exposures for noise control on one panel brought the final total exposure time to 58 hours 20 minutes for the entire image.

Note: All our prints are printed on Baryta 325g Paper, which is an excellent paper for framing. The paper is a gloss type, which gives very vivid colour views.