The Great Orion Nebula – Messier 42 – and the surrounding region.

We are pleased to present our latest capture of the Great Orion Nebula (aka Messier 42) region, such a triumph of enchanting beauty.

The Great Orion Nebula (Messier 42), Messier 43 and the “Running Man” (NGC 1977) nebula.

The Great Orion Nebula (Messier 42), Messier 43 and the “Running Man” (NGC 1977) nebula.

The image above comes from the average of 60, 30-second unguided exposures, remotely taken with the ARTEC250+Paramount ME+C3Pro61000EC robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy, under the darkest skies of the Italian peninsula.

This region of the sky (part of the Orion molecular cloud complex) is a challenge, once you have to process your images of those treasures. It is dominated by the bright core of Messier 42, hosting the so-called “Trapezium”, the Theta1 Orionis system (four easy stars, plus four more, but less obvious), discovered by Galileo Galilei. All around, we have nebular areas of different luminosity, quickly dropping in brightness to the sky background. Finding the right balance for the final image processing is not easy, needing an HDR-like approach.

I managed to spend a couple of hours on this task, finding what made be eventually happy and, hopefully, bringing to you the elegance of this spot of the sky, with its very complex and fascinating texture.

Messier 42, the “Great Orion Nebula” (aka NGC 1976), dominates the scene. Visible to the naked eye, this vast diffuse nebula is one the most studied objects in the Universe. Quite incredibly, Galileo did not mention the nebula in his report covering the Trapezium observation earlier than 1610 and the first certain reports came a few months later. Messier 42, aka NGC 1976, is one of the most photographed deep sky gems of the night sky.

Placed at 1400 light years from us, its linear size is around 13 light years: many stars were born and are being born there, including the Trapezium cluster mentioned above. Messier 42 is so rich of contrasts, putting together bright emitting areas with dark, dusty regions.

On its North-Eastern border, there is Messier 43 (NGC 1982), physically part of the previous, larger nebula. At its center, there is a triple, (only spectroscopic) star system, its main component has almost 25 thousand of times the luminosity of our Sun.

On the north in our image, there is a bright HII (ionized atomic hydrogen) region, including a reflecting component: there, we can see a dark shape, resembling a man running from the right to the left, hence the “Running Nebula” (NGC 1977) nickname.

Below we indicate the names of the nebulae used above.

M42 region with IDs.

M42 region with IDs.

Back to the “Nebulae” page

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