M42 The Great Orion Nebula

So far this November and December has been unseasonably warm here in Tucson.  It is a bit disconcerting, actually, as the days are still comfortable for wearing shorts.  Working as I do on Mount Lemmon, I have this nagging feeling that we may not get much snowfall this winter, which the mountain needs.  This is not a post about climate change,  but I do want to point to an excellent piece by Phil Plait today taking on climate change denial.

With the high pressure system that seems to have permanently parked itself in our neck of the planet, we have had some phenomenal nights for observing at the Lost Pleiad Observatory.  With temperatures requiring only a sweatshirt, I spent the better part of last night cruising around the winter milky way.  Using my TEC 140 I spent hours enjoying many wide field views, especially those of my old friends the Messier objects.   Before retiring I thought to myself  "self, you should try and take a picture of the Orion Nebula!"

I brought out my laptop and camera and using BackyardEOS took a few images of the Great Orion Nebula.   Below is the result, of which I am shocked!  This was taken with the moon up in the sky, without accurately polar aligning my CGEM mount, and with a Baader UHC filter.  The single image is 50 seconds at ISO 3200, and was actually a little more detailed before I messed with it in Photoshop to try and make the background sky more black.  I should probably give the raw image to my friend Mike (are you reading this?) and he could make it very pretty.

Click to enlarge

Most amazing is our camera sensor technologies...look at images in astronomy texts from even 15 years ago and see what was being generated with large instruments over hours of exposure time...and consider that I am using a 140mm telescope and an exposure of less than one minute!