Orions Sword - October 11th (+ rubbish horsehead)

[Skywatcher]

Woke in the small hours to use the 'rest room' and gazed out of the window to find the moon had set and the sky was crystal clear - Saw Orion sparking away and couldn't resist (I think I need some sort of help as this was 3 am)

Took me the best part of an hour to align the scope and get everything working and TBH it nearly deteriorated into John Cleese hitting the mini with the stick - any way it all ot working and after 2 hours imaging and an hour processing we get Orions Sword

This is 3 Nebulae - the 'Running Man' at the top and Two stuck together in the middle (the ball is designated M43 and the Cave M42) definitely my best stab at this and much more detail than before although some detail has been lost downsizing the image and converting it to a jpeg .

To give you some idea of scale - if you shrink the distance between us and the sun to be 2.5 cm then this Nebula ( the main one) would be 20km !!



And I also had a crack at the horsehead nebula which is mega difficult to get without guiding the scope and should need 10 minute exposures - this is a 2 minute exposure and is very messy - The bright star in the image is the left star of orions belt - the fuzzy picture shos the flame nebula and the dark nebula which is supposed to look like a horses head.

Not great but something to improve on next time

[Steven]

Amazing photos!!!!

[Tink]

I have never, ever seen anything so infinite.

[Keith]

It still blows my mind that you can get images like that from your garden

[foreverducky]

So amazing! I'm impressed.

[Johnie]

That is so cool!

[Dawn]

They are really cool photos but 3am - how can your brain function at 3am?

[Skywatcher]

They are really cool photos but 3am - how can your brain function at 3am?

Badly, setup usually takes me 20 minutes and it took me the best part of an hour.

Thanks for the kind comments as alway chaps - this is the brightest nebula in the sky and is easily visible to the naked eye - Orion will be in the evening sky in the winter and I'll post more about it then.

Might redo the processing on th sword - belive it or not Keith that shot is not far off what came out of the camera

[Dawn]

I think it was actually an Austin 1100.

[Skywatcher]

oh dear