Messier 42 - The Orion Nebula
 
An image of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42) in the constellation Orion.

The Orion Nebula is the brightest diffuse nebula visible in the night sky, and one of the brightest deep sky objects, shining at a magnitude of approximately 4. It makes a beautiful telescoping target in small and large telescopes. More infromation can be found on the Orion Nebula at: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/m/m042.html .

This image was captured on ISO 800 Fuji negative film.
   
A photographic image of the Orion Nebula captured on 35mm Fuji ISO 1600 film. The film was exposed for 9 minutes at prime focus with a Meade 10-inch Newtonian. The seeing was very good the night this image was captured in February 1999. The telescope was guided with the internal tracking motor and manually corrected using a Magellan II hand control/corrector and a refractor guidescope attached to the main scope. This image was scanned from a photographic print.

Some additional analysis was done on this image and it can be viewed here.
   
An enlargement of the M42 area showing the difference in photographed color among stars. This image has been processed to remove a slight trailing due to telescope tracking error.
   
A 5 minute exposure of the M42 area, the sword of Orion, scanned from the negative.
   

A wide field view of the consellation Orion captured on 35mm film using a 35mm wide angle lense with the camera piggybacked on a 10-inch Newtonian.

The location of the Orion Nebula is shown below.
   
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