RE: My Astro Photo Of The Day - Alnitak and Vicinity
November 10, 2010 at 1:17 am
(This post was last modified: November 10, 2010 at 1:34 am by orogenicman.)
![[Image: alnitak_vicinity-1.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i132.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fq9%2Fjryates%2Falnitak_vicinity-1.jpg)
Alnitak and Vicinity
Although I had surgery on my left shoulder back in October, I couldn't resist such a clear, dry night as last night for doing some Astronomy. So with the help of a Friend, I went to the observatory site last night at tooks a bunch of pictures. Here is the first of several to come.
Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) is a triple star some 800 light years distant in the constellation Orion. It is the leftmost star on Orion's Belt along with Delta Orionis (Mintaka) and Epsilon Orionis (Alnilam), stars not seen in this image. The primary star is a hot blue supergiant with an absolute magnitude of -5.25, and is the brightest class O star in the night sky with a visual magnitude of 1.70. It has two bluish 4th magnitude companions. The stars are members of The Orion OB1 Association.
Located 1500 light years away, and behind Alnitak are several spectacular star-forming regions, among them the famous dark Nebula B33 (The Horsehead nebula), to the lower right, and NGC 2024 (The Flame nebula), to the left. In addition to these famous night sky objects, other interesting features include NGC 2023 (one of the brightest sources of fluorescent molecular hydrogen in the galaxy), a reflection nebula to the lower left of the Horsehead Nebula, and IC 432 and IC 431, reflection nebulae which surround two of the bright stars to the left of Alnitak (unfortunately, only IC 432 shows up in this image, which can be seen surrounding the star just to the left of Alnitak near the left edge of the image).
These star-forming nebulae are part of the larger nebulae complex associated with the great Orion Nebula, and are part of the closest star-forming regions to our own solar system.
Image
6x4 minutes for a total of 24 minutes at ISO 1600
Stacked in DeepSkyStacker, Dark Subtracted
Processed in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended
Taken on November 8, 2010 at the Louisville Astronomical Society Observatory, in Curby, Indiana
Equipment:
Hutech Canon T1i DSLR
200 mm f5 Konus Newtonian
Losmandy G11 Gemini GOTO mount on Heavy Duty Tripod
Orion Shorty Autoguide Scope with Starshooter autoguider
Comments: I had some trouble with the autoguider last night due to unstable seeing conditions, and so the guiding on this image is less than desirable.
Next - the great Orion Nebula, M42. Stay tuned.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
