Starship Asterisk*

The Clouds of Orion the Hunter

Explanation: Cradled in cosmic dust and glowing hydrogen, stellar nurseries in Orion the Hunter lie at the edge of giant molecular clouds some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning about 30 degrees, this breath-taking vista stretches across the well-known constellation from head to toe (left to right) and beyond. At 1,500 light years away, the Great Orion Nebula is the closest large star forming region, here visible just right and below center. To its left are the Horsehead Nebula, M78, and Orion's belt stars. Sliding your cursor over the picture will also find red giant Betelgeuse at the hunter's shoulder, bright blue Rigel at his foot, the Witch Head Nebula above -- and illuminated by -- Rigel, and the glowing Lambda Orionis (Meissa) nebula on the left, near Orion's head. Of course, the Orion Nebula and bright stars are easy to see with the unaided eye, but dust clouds and emission from the extensive interstellar gas in this nebula-rich complex, are too faint and much harder to record. In this mosaic of broadband telescopic images, additional image data acquired with a narrow hydrogen alpha filter was used to bring out the pervasive tendrils of energized atomic hydrogen gas like in the arc of the giant Barnard's Loop.

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What a superb picture! I love it! I can imagine - or I can't, frankly - how much work has gone into producing it.

The details are amazing, the annotation great, and the RGB + Ha colors are stunning.

Welcome back here, Rogelio!

Ann

Awesome picture. Thanks so much for the identification overlay. We very basic amateurs need all the help we can get.

NCTom wrote:Awesome picture. Thanks so much for the identification overlay. We very basic amateurs need all the help we can get.

Couldnt agree more!! Easily one of the best Ive seen in quite sometime!!!

Curious but why is there an LBN 917 and an LBN 915/917? It makes me think at some point in time some of LBN 917 seperated and joined LBN 915?? Any insight would be appreciated.

CURRAHEE CHRIS wrote:Curious but why is there an LBN 917 and an LBN 915/917? It makes me think at some point in time some of LBN 917 seperated and joined LBN 915?? Any insight would be appreciated.

I think the latter is supposed to be LBN 915/919, but I'm far from an expert.

Rob

Truly amazing image, Rob Gendler would be proud! Normally I prefer seeing most things north up but I don't mind seeing this orientated landscape. This mosaic is so wide it includes objects in three separate constellations! As well as Orion and Monoceros, it contains something located in Taurus, the open cluster NGC 1817 near the left edge of the image. There is also a little yellow reflection nebula between NGC 1817 and Sh2-264, this is catalogued as vdB37.

Also there is a mistake in the labeled version. The nebula marked as LBN 915/917 is actually NGC 1788 and LDN 1616. There are lots of other nebulae and clusters that haven't been labeled.

Finally, I would like to point out that this is a mosaic of 49 frames!! It would be incredible if this could be expanded even further next winter!

Ann wrote:Welcome back here, Rogelio!

Thanks Ann, you do know how to make a photographer feel good about their work

Abot the welcome, also thanks, but I never really left

Rogelio

It is a wonderful image of the famous hunter and an excellent guide to help us view his (or hers -I guess Bellatrix is the huntress here) hunting ground. One day, soon I hope, Betelgeuse will supply a "supernova" neck to help connect the head to an unfortunate case of "Bernard's" scoliosis? Couldn't be helped; that sword case contains so many stellar wonder it has to be quite heavy.

He'd better be careful though. Rogelio has illustrated a good way from "witch" to trip.

starsurfer wrote:Also there is a mistake in the labeled version. The nebula marked as LBN 915/917 is actually NGC 1788 and LDN 1616. There are lots of other nebulae and clusters that haven't been labeled.

Apologies, and yes, there was a wrong label indeed. I submitted the corrected version and it should be replaced sometime today. Thank you and Rob for pointing it out.

I'm proud of Rob Gendler too by the way

Landscape fits better everywhere, I like both orientations. I even like it "upside down".

Thanks for all the comments!

Rogelio

Curious but why is there an LBN 917 and an LBN 915/917? It makes me think at some point in time some of LBN 917 seperated and joined LBN 915?? Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks to a new overlay being emailed from Rogelio (the astrophotographer), the roll-over annotation has now been updated!

- RJN

RBANDREO wrote:

starsurfer wrote:Also there is a mistake in the labeled version. The nebula marked as LBN 915/917 is actually NGC 1788 and LDN 1616. There are lots of other nebulae and clusters that haven't been labeled.

Apologies, and yes, there was a wrong label indeed. I submitted the corrected version and it should be replaced sometime today. Thank you and Rob for pointing it out.

I'm proud of Rob Gendler too by the way

Landscape fits better everywhere, I like both orientations. I even like it "upside down".

Thanks for all the comments!

Rogelio

That's great to see the corrected labels! However there is another one that I missed, the nebula marked as vdB62-3 is LDN 1622.

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:One day, soon I hope, Betelgeuse will supply a "supernova" neck to help connect the head to an unfortunate case of "Bernard's" scoliosis?

It would be nice if the bowshock associated with Betelgeuse was visible optically in Ha!

starsurfer wrote:That's great to see the corrected labels! However there is another one that I missed, the nebula marked as vdB62-3 is LDN 1622.

They're all in the same area. The vdB objects are the small bright reflection nebulae and LDN is the dark nebulae, so I think that's fine. As you pointed out, many objects are not labeled. I mostly labeled the most popular objects plus a few more. I think if you label too many objects, most people would likely feel overwhelmed and won't pay attention to even the popular objects.

Thanks!
Rogelio

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:It is a wonderful image of the famous hunter and an excellent guide to help us view his (or hers -I guess Bellatrix is the huntress here) hunting ground. One day, soon I hope, Betelgeuse will supply a "supernova" neck to help connect the head to an unfortunate case of "Bernard's" scoliosis? Couldn't be helped; that sword case contains so many stellar wonder it has to be quite heavy.

He'd better be careful though. Rogelio has illustrated a good way from "witch" to trip.

Nah, that isn't scoliosis he suffers from, Orion is really Master Roshi and the Loop is his turtle shell back pack

BMAONE23 wrote:

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:It is a wonderful image of the famous hunter and an excellent guide to help us view his (or hers -I guess Bellatrix is the huntress here) hunting ground. One day, soon I hope, Betelgeuse will supply a "supernova" neck to help connect the head to an unfortunate case of "Bernard's" scoliosis? Couldn't be helped; that sword case contains so many stellar wonder it has to be quite heavy.

He'd better be careful though. Rogelio has illustrated a good way from "witch" to trip.

Nah, that isn't scoliosis he suffers from, Orion is really Master Roshi and the Loop is his turtle shell back pack

I think I'm going to have to check out this Master Roshi fellow. He seems right up my alley. Thanks for the tip.

RBANDREO wrote:

starsurfer wrote:That's great to see the corrected labels! However there is another one that I missed, the nebula marked as vdB62-3 is LDN 1622.

They're all in the same area. The vdB objects are the small bright reflection nebulae and LDN is the dark nebulae, so I think that's fine. As you pointed out, many objects are not labeled. I mostly labeled the most popular objects plus a few more. I think if you label too many objects, most people would likely feel overwhelmed and won't pay attention to even the popular objects.

Thanks!
Rogelio

I feel the opposite way! It's good to label most of the prominent objects, so people take notice of the unknown nebulae, especially if it draws attention towards things people might not otherwise notice.
It is true that the vdB nebulae are in that area but they are not visible in a widefield image.
Also below is an image of LDN 1622 by Ignacio de la Cueva Torregrosa that marks the location of vdB62 and vdB63.

Superb picture!