Messier 42 (M42), the famous Orion Nebula, is an emission-reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion, the Hunter. With an apparent magnitude of 4.0, the Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. It lies at a distance of approximately 1,350 light years from Earth and is the nearest stellar nursery to Earth. The nebula has the designation NGC 1976 in the New General Catalogue.
According to NASA, the majestic nebula can even be seen with the naked eye as it has an apparent magnitude of +4. The faintest object the human eye can see under the best conditions is +6 on the astronomical magnitude scale. It's, therefore, no surprise that the Orion Nebula has captivated civilizations around the world. For example, the ancient Maya of Mesoamerica interpreted the nebula as the cosmic fire of creation, according to NASA.
Just to the North of the nebula another nebula can be found, the Running man nebula because it resembles a running man. This is a reflection nebula. The whole Running Man Nebula is believed to be illuminated and excited by 42 Orionis, a hot young stellar object located within the nebula.
This image is the result of 30 missions scheduled with the Slooh ultrawide refractor telescope. Because the Orion nebula is extremely bright and contains lots of details I have chosen for an imaging preset with binning 2x2 (==> better resolution and less sensitive); for the Canary Two Ultra Wide Field this is the Bright Star preset. It results in 20 seconds exposures for each channel with binning 2x2. In the Bright star preset this overexposure is greatly reduced and the image has more details.
In total the images of these 30 mission are processed in PixInsight. Total exposure is 40 minutes (10 minutes per L, R, G and B channel)
Click on the image to get a larger version