This is the best photograph I've taken so far of the the Orion Nebula (also known as The Great Nebula in Orion and M42 from the Messier catalog). It is a large star forming region that is 1344 light-years away from us in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The ultra-violet light from the young hot stars of the Trapezium (the four stars in the core of the nebula) is ionizing the gas in the region causing it to glow in the colors you see in this photograph. This photograph is a combination of 40 one minute and 40 ten second exposures that were taken while tracking the stars and combined by averaging them together for two reasons. One is to reduce the background noise produced by the electronics in the camera. The second is to prevent the Trapezium and the region around it from being blown out from over exposure.
Photographer: Rick Scott
Date / Time: January 4, 2020 at 9:06 PM to January 5, 2020 at 12:03 AM MST
Telescope: home-made 10" f/4.6 Lurie-Houghton
Mount: Losmandy HGM Titan with Gemini 2
Guiding: Orion ShortTube 80, ZWO ASI120MM Mini, PHD2
Camera: Canon EOS 60Da controlled with BackyardEOS
Filter: Optolong L-Pro
Exposure 40 x 60 sec and 40 x 10 sec, f/4.6, ISO 400 in raw mode
40 flats, 40 bias, or no dark frames
Processed in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and Adobe Photoshop CS6.
Updated: January 19, 2020