The Great Nebula in Orion (aka M42/43) and The Running Man Nebula (ngc1977)

M42 M43 ngc1977


M42/43 - The Great Nebula in Orion and The Running Man (lower left; ngc1977)
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From SEDS.ORG:

The Orion Nebula M42 is the brightest diffuse nebula in the sky, and one of the brightest deepsky objects of all. It is visible to the naked eye under moderately good conditions, and rewarding in telescopes of every size, from the smallest glasses to the greatest Earth-bound observatories as well as outer-space observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also a big object in the sky, extending to over 1 degree in diameter, thus covering more than four times the area of the Full Moon.

As it is so well visible to the naked eye, one may wonder that its nebulous nature was apparently not documented before the invention of the telescope. However, the brightest stars within the nebula were noted early and cataloged as one bright star of about fifth magnitude: In about 130 AD, Ptolemy included it in his catalog, as did Tycho Brahe in the late 16th century, and Johann Bayer in 1603 - the latter cataloging it as Theta Orion in his Uranometria. In 1610, Galileo detected a number of faint stars when first looking at this region with his telescope, but didn't note the nebula. Some years later, on February 4, 1617, Galileo took a closer look at the main star, Theta1, and found it to be triple, at his magnification of 27 or 28x, again not perceiving the nebula.

Camera: Apogee U16M w Astrodon Gen II H-Alpha and SBIG ST402ME attached to a Borg 60mm achromat
Scope: AP155EDF w 4" FF and Robofocus
Mount: Paramount ME
4x30min + 6x3min

Captured via TSX and CCD-Commander
Calibration and preliminary processing in PixInsight
Final assembly in PS CC 2017

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Captured Nov 2016
Lucknow, Ontario

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