Pictures of the Orion Nebula (M42)

The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest star formation regions in the sky. Some small detail is visible already with binoculars.

It is located 1500 light years away. Its bright part looks as large as the Moon (0.5 degrees), and is 15 light years in size.

It is too large to fit into the field of our camera.

Images taken: Feb. 26 and March 1, 2007, by Sarah Simonson, Halley Anne Hargrave, Erin Callahan.

Telescope: Meade 12 in at f/5.8 in the little dome of Kennon Observatory.

Camera: SBIG ST-10 CCD

This is a false-color picture. Images were taken with narrowband (Astrodon) S-II, O-III and H-alpha filters.

Exposures: 3 x 1 min H-alpha (red), 3 x 1 min O-III (green), 43 x 1 min S-II (blue).

Image processing: CCDoops + CCDsoft + CCDSharp + Photoshop CS.

Images taken: Feb. 18, 2007

Students: J. Odom, E. Vance

Telescope: Meade 12 in with f/5.7 focal reducer (f=68in) in the little dome of Kennon Observatory.

Camera: SBIG ST-7 CCD

This is a mosaic of a 2 x 3 set of images, seamlessly matched with Adobe Photoshop CS. Total image size is 51'x54'.

Exposures: Each of the six sets consisted of 60 sec (red), 60 sec (green), 90 sec (blue) exposures.

Image processing: CCDoops + CCDsoft + CCDSharp + Photoshop CS.

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Images taken: Feb. 15, 2004

Telescope: A small but good quality 3-inch (f/6.3) refractor called "Pronto", with f/4 focal reducer (f=48in) in the parking lot. The telescope was mounted on a Meade LX-200 for tracking.

Size of the images: 15'x20'

Camera: SBIG ST-7 CCD

Seeing: 7 as.

Labels: Added with Adobe Photoshop to indicate the directions and the scale.

Exposures: 25x20 sec (red), 25x20 sec (green), 50x20 sec (blue), medium resolution (2x2 binning).

Image processing: CCDoops + CCDSoft + Photoshop Elements.