The Orion Nebula, wide

What you are looking at

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Distance

1,344 light-years

This picture spans

27 light-years

The light left

Around the year 680

What it is

The nearest great nursery of new stars

For photographers

A 2 x 2 mosaic round the deep centre field; each outline is one sensor frame, with frames kept of frames taken.

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Exposures

20 s at ISO 3200 throughout; 2 s at ISO 800 for the core

Frames

Centre 39 of 69. Panels 13, 12, 5 and 2 of 13 each: the last two were shot under cloud and are shown in grey

Mosaic

Each panel centred by plate solve, then placed by its own plate solution; scaled on shared stars; matched to the centre with a constant and a plane; feathered

Sampling

1.552 arcsec per pixel (2 x 2 mean of the working grid). Stars 4.4 to 5 arcsec wide

Field

67.9 x 43.4 arcmin, cropped level from the mosaic; one frame is 38.8 x 25.9

When

4 October 2026, before dawn. 41 to 46 degrees up, Moon up, thin cloud passing

Calibration

Flat from 26 twilight-sky frames, large-scale shape from cloud-lit frames. No darks

Stacking

RAW colour planes (no demosaic), hot pixels by 3 x 3 median, registered on stars with rotation, sigma-clipped mean

Finish

Black 34 and white 199 of 255, S-curve 0.3. Saturation x 1.5. Dark sky made neutral and smoothed (bilateral, 3 px)

Telescope

Celestron 8SE Schmidt-Cassegrain with dew shield: 203 mm aperture, 2,084 mm focal length (measured by plate solve), f/10.3

Camera

Sony a6000, stock, at prime focus: APS-C 23.5 x 15.6 mm, 6000 x 4000, 3.9 micron pixels, RAW

Mount

Sky-Watcher EQ6-R, unguided. Set down 27 degrees off the pole; both axes driven from a pointing model fitted to plate solves. Residual drift about 0.1 arcsec per second