It was a reasonably clear night sky yesterday evening, and in spite
of the cold conditions, and the howling gale whistling through the
trees at the bottom of the garden, I thought I’d seize the
opportunity to do a spot of astro-photography,
The constellation of
Orion is prominent in the night sky at this time of year, and so I
decided to focus on the Sword of Orion just below the Belt.
The fuzzy looking
star in the middle of the three prominent stars that make up the sword is the Orion Nebula, and is always a point of fascination for me.
The Orion Nebula, or
M42 is approximatly1,500 light years away making it the closest known
large star forming region from Earth, and is estimated to be 24 light
years across.
Although my camera
couldn’t hope to compete with more high end equipment, I was still
pleased to see some of the red and purple hues of the star forming
gas clouds.
Ad astra per
aspera