The Jewels of Orion’s Sword
The constellation of Orion is home to some of the most spectacular and recognisable deep sky objects in the night sky. In this multi-panel mosaic taken with a modified Canon EOS6D through a Skywatcher Esprit 120ED refractor, the sweeping view down the length of Orion's sword or scabbard captures from the left the bright Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), the dark Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33), the Running Man reflection nebula (Sh2-279), the mighty Orion Nebula (M42), and the region around the less well known 13th Pearl Nebula (NGC 1999) towards the bottom right. Throughout the image stars light up the turbulent clouds of dust and gas that fill the interstellar space between the nebulas, with the blue supergiant star Alnitak outshining them all on the left (it is the brightest O-class star in the night sky). This image was taken between 4th and 11th of January 2019 from Chittering, Western Australia.
This was a long and complicated image to produce. It is a mosaic of 5 panels, each panel shot with different length exposures for HDR combination, and each different length exposure shot multiple times for stacking. Each panel image integration time was over 2.5 hours, with the total image integration being over 12.5 hours and conducted over three nights. As I was using HaRGB broadband filter I needed to get out of the city (due to light pollution), hence for every one of those three nights I spent 2 hours in transit and another 2 hours for packing, unpacking, and setting up the telescope, camera, and associated equipment. Three nights with less than 3 hours of sleep in the space of a week, and still I had to process the image.
