Orion’s Belt
Image Details:
Orion is a well known constellation and even those without much knowledge of the night sky can easily spot it. Aside from being a famous constellation and staple of the Winter sky, it hosts numerous areas of interest to both visual astronomers and astrophotographers. The area seen here covers the 3 stars of Orion’s Belt and a section of the nearby molecular cloud. Most notable is the large magenta Horsehead nebula at the top, lit by the brighter blue star (actually a triple star system) Sigma Orionis seen in the center of the red field. Next to that is the Flame, lit by the leftmost belt star Alnitak. While Hydrogen nebulae typically appear magenta in color, the heavy presence of heavier dust in this area has attenuated the signal into a more orange color - this same kind of dust is also visible in lesser amounts across the photo as the burnt orange / brown clouds.
I shot this area of sky during an outing to capture Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF while waiting for the comet to reach an acceptable altitude above the horizon. While the nebulae themselves are fairly bright (compared to some other targets), the dark skies devoid of almost all light pollution made the 3 hours of capture much more efficient. If I had attempted this from home, reaching the same image quality would have required multiple full nights of imaging.
Equipment:
William Optics Star71-II Petzval APO (345mm Focal Length, F/4.9)
ZWO ASI6200MM-P, ZWO Filters
Hypertuned Celestron CGEM-II
Autoguiding: Orion 50mm Guidescope + ZWO ASI224MC
Exposures:
Red, Green, Blue: 12, 12, 12 x 300” (Total: 3h)
Misc Details:
Capture Software: AstrophotographyTool, PHD2 (guiding), Celestron CPWI (mount control), Pegasus Powerbox (dew heater control, power management)
Processing Software: PixInsight
Taken from: Fall River State Park, KS, Bortle 2
Capture Dates: 22 January, 2023
