ORION SWORD - EMISSION AND REFLECTION COMPLEX

ORION

 (Image Centred at: ra 05.36/ dec -04:53)

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December 2009, Mercedes Observatory Buenos Aires, Argentina

AAAA - Star Party

DATA

TYPE: Emission and Reflection Nebula Complex

Visible at naked eye

Apparent Diameter: approximately 250 x 170 arc minutes

DISTANCE: 1500 / 1.600 lights years

IMAGE INFORMATION

SCOPE: William Optics Zenithstar 66 with WO 0.8 x fr/ff

CAMERA: Canon 20Da

GUIDING: Celestron C8 SCT working at f5.1

IMAGE ACQUISITION: Images Plus - Guiding AstroArt 3.0 - Control Interface 3.72 plug in

FILTERS: None

SKY CONDITIONS: rural skies - transparency and seeing good 

EXPOSURES: 5 x 10 minutes; 5 x 5 minutes and 5 x 1 minute

PROCESSING: Calibration (Sigma Median) done Images Plus. No darks no flats no bias used. CCD Sharp, Photoshop CS2

OBJECT DESCRIPTION AND IMAGE SESSION

Visible at naked eye and in both Hemispheres, this is probably one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky. The complex shows a variety of components; starting from magnitude 4.2 open cluster NGC 1981; the bluish emission region contains NGC 1973, 1975 and 1977; finally the Orion nebula gathers M43, M42 and NGC 1980.

This was the first time trying Images Plus focus routine. Unfortunately by mistake the images were acquired in the lowest JPG resolution which is about 1.9 mega pixels.