Running Man Nebula and Orion Nebula M42 - DSLR
The Great Orion Nebula is a favorite of anyone with a telescope.  It is easily found within the sword of the constellation Orion.   Even through binoculars, this object can be seen
as a billowing cloud.  The view only gets better through a telescope.  Much of the detail within the Orion Nebula, seen in the right half of the image above, can be seen with a small
telescope.  Visually, only the color is missing.  The red color is best recorded photographically, and represents the emision spectra of hydrogen gas excited by the neighboring
young hot stars.  A much larger cloud of denser matter surrounds this area.  The bright center of the Orion Nebula is a spectacular stellar nursery, giving rise to many young suns.

The bluer object, to the left of the Orion nebula in the image above and to the left in the images below, has been called the "
Running Man Nebula."  Dark intersecting lanes of
dust create the apparition of a man's arms spread wide as he runs towards our left.  The blue color represents a reflection nebula, with clouds of dust merely reflecting the light of
nearby stars.

The DSLR image above combined 29 exposures of 5 minutes each, taken with a Hutech-modified Canon 6D DSLR through an Astro-physics 305 mm Ricardi-Honders Astrograph
at f 3.8.  Compared to the CCD image below taken through the same telescope, the larger size of the DSLR chip allowed the entire view to be obtained without the use of mosaics.
Total imaging time was under 2 hours.

The CCD image below was taken with a 2 frame mosaic using a QSI-583wsg camera through an Astro-physics 305 mm Ricardi-Honders Astrograph at f 3.8.  Each frame
combined about 30 minutes of red and green and 45 minutes of blue exposures.  Total imaging time was close to 4 hours.
.
Music - U2 - New Years Day

LYRICS

All is quiet on new years day,
A world in white gets underway,
And I want to be with you,
Be with you night and day.
Nothing changes on new years day
click on image for full size, mouse over image to show diffraction spikes on stars
click on image for larger view